Githa Hariharan's fiction is wonderful-full of subtleties and humor and tenderness.

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

Every immigrant family, it seems, has someone who does not belong in the new country they have come to. It feels like permanent exile to that one brother or wife who cannot stand a silent fate in Boston or London or Melbourne. I’ve met many who remain haunted by the persistent ghost of an earlier place.

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

There was always, he thought, this pleasure ahead of him, an ace of joy up his sleeve so he could say you can do anything to me, take everything away, put me in prison, but I will know [her] when we are old.

One of the things that happens in novels it's almost like a continual debate with yourself. That's why you're writing the book. It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.

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.