Once I've discovered the story, I might restructure it, maybe move things around, set up a clue that something is going to happen later, but that happens much later in an editorial capacity.

Truth, at the wrong time, can be dangerous.

You're getting everyone's point of view at the same time, which, for me, is the perfect state for a novel: a cubist state, the cubist novel.

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

You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.

As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.

I tend not to know what the plot is or the story is or even the theme. Those things come later, for me.

The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human. Meander if you want to get to town.

When you're writing, it's as if you're within a kind of closed world.

You want to suggest something new, but at the same time, resolve the drama of the action in the novel.

I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door.

In the book the relationship with Katharine and Almasy is sort of only in the patient's mind.

Once I've discovered the story, I might restructure it, maybe move things around, set up a clue that something is going to happen later, but that happens much later in an editorial capacity.

Research can be a big clunker. It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light.

It's an odd state to be in, blowing the whistle on your home country.

The past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled.

I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out.

The last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like being in the same elevator or lifeboat.

It's a discovery of a story when I write a book, a case of inching ahead on each page and discovering what's beyond in the darkness, beyond where you're writing.

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

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

It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.

I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure.

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.

Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again.

To write about someone like myself would be very limiting.

It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.

It doubles your perception to write from the point of view of someone youre not.

A love story is not about those who lost their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing—not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past.

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.

Married people should not be quick to hear what is said by either when in ill humor.

I'm leaving on a jet plane. Don't know when I'll be back again

The films that I really liked and the ones that really blew my mind when I was younger were independent films. They're like great records to me.

Even though we work in the same field, we have an intense private life away from our professional lives.

The apostle enters upon his subject thus - Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers; for there is no power but of God: the powers that be, are ordained of God.

I have always detested any departure from reality, an attitude which I relate to my mother's poor mental health.

I never take myself too seriously.

My duties are wider than those of the Pope. The Pope is only concerned with the spiritual welfare of his flock.

I am reasonably happy. I didn't find Jesus or anything like that. Part of it is that I just feel that I could go home. I did not feel like that for a long time, but I could go back now.

I try and get out there and audition as much as possible.

I'm fortunate to work for a company that supports investigative journalism with strong editors and lawyers. That's the benefit of working for a company that's been around for more than a century.

You just have to have the guidance to lead you in the direction until you can do it yourself.

My idea is to make moves to bring chess back to the world's map, to make it part of the world's geography again.

Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason.

Inventing is something that has always come very natural to me. As a child, I was always fiddling with things, making contraptions. I'd see something, go home, and try to make something even better.

There was a prison uprising at Alcatraz, and I drove the Marines over there in a landing craft to quell the riot. I am the only serviceman I know with an American Theatre ribbon.

I found that my career at Bell Telephone Labs thrived because of the environment, which encouraged cooperative research, offered opportunities for access to sophisticated equipment, and fellowship.

They were all interested in what I was going to do, because I'd never worked in televsion before.

I think permitting the game to become too physical takes away a little bit of the beauty.