Half a page--and the morning is already ancient.

... the desert, where there is the communal book of moonlight. We were among the rumour of wells. In the palace of winds.

The one of the great sadnesses of any life is knowing what you know now and then remembering what you did not know then.

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.

There are betrayals in war that are childlike compared with our human betrayals during peace. The new lovers enter the habits of the other. Things are smashed, revealed in a new light. This is done with nervous or tender sentences, although the heart is an organ of fire.

Water is the exile, carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth.

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.