Everything is biographical, Lucian Freud says. What we make, why it is made, how we draw a dog, who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget. Everything is collage, even genetics. 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 we cross.

If you look at Japanese film, it is made up of collage or bricolage, it is made up of lists, and suddenly when you stand back from the lists you begin to see the pattern of a life.

A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands knowing it is something more than water. There is a plant whose heart, if one cuts it out is replaced with fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid amount of the missing heart.

It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not.

How can you smile as though your whole life hasn't capsized

I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries.

Politically I don't believe anymore that we can only have one voice to a story, it's like having one radio station to represent a country.