That's Anil's path. She grows up in Sri Lanka, goes and gets educated abroad, and through fate or chance gets brought back by the Human Rights Commission to investigate war crimes.

She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.

Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy

The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.

We are expanded by tears, we are told, not reduced by them.

We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.

The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion

There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross.

For the first forty days a child is given dreams of previous lives. Journeys, winding paths, a hundred small lessons and then the past is erased.

A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water.

Death means you are in the third person.

Peace begins with nonjudgmental love.

I went to a high school that was so dangerous the school newspaper had an obituary column.

Humor is the secret into the audience's other ranges of emotions.

If you do not find me funny, that is your problem and I am not going away.

Connecting with others is rewarding; it makes us feel like we're not alone in the world.

Strange: how when a light is extinguished, it's immediately as if it has never been. Darkness fills in again, complete.

I describe myself as a "spiritual sampler," raised Catholic, been Baptist, Methodist, and a Unity member.

We cannot build foundations of a state without rule of law.

What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?

I'm protective of the reputation of Christ and the church.