A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch.

I believe in such cartography – to be marked by nature, not just label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. ... All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.

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

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.

There's a lot of thievery involved in writing. You're breaking into other people's spaces and other people's stories.

She moved from being a young woman into having the angular look of a queen, someone who has made her face with her desire to be a certain kind of person. He still likes that about her. Her smartness, the fact that she did not inherit that look or that beauty, but it was something searched for and that it will always reflect a present stage of her character.

In Sri Lanka a well-told lie is worth a thousand facts.