You're getting everyone's point of view at the same time, which for me, is the perfect state for a novel: a cubist state, the cubist novel.

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

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.

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.

You really will be better off in life if you read a lot.

Highly motivated achievers are looking not to receive but to contribute. They are looking for problems that are personally satisfying to solve.

There is no monster more destructive than the inventive mind that has outstripped philosophy.

From labor there shall come forth rest.

The only ugliness is that of the heart, seen through the face. And though beauty be obvious, the only loveliness is invisible.

A thing named is a thing tamed.

Invest yourself in everything you do. There's fun in being serious.

It is a remarkably beautiful piece of home furnishing, the Oscar. I used to keep it up in front of a mirror so that it looked like two

I am in musical theatre, but it isn't necessarily what I listen to in my leisure time, do you know what I mean?

I live my life outside of the box because when I die they're going to put me into one!