...the heart is an organ of fire.

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.

It is a pity that dead men are still impacting the world while men who are still alive are wasting away, roaming the world without an understanding of what to do with their time.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her . . . but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.

The whole world has changed, so you just stay current with the world. There's nothing different in my language of how I say things.

The blood that is once inflamed with wine is apt to boil with rage.

My hope is that learning about past evils will help us to avoid them in the future.

There are no more excuses for leaving women out of the inner circles of power. Qualified women are everywhere. Women are ready for leadership; they just need to be identified and asked.

That's how hatred is created: two different groups, each insisting they're on the moral high ground

If I'd been whoring before class and waved a corset at him, no one would have thought twice about it!

I have nothing to complain about.