 I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out. |
| 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. |
| It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow. |
| It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself. |
| 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. |
| A writer uses a pen instead of a scalpel or blow torch. |
| The past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled. |
| 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. |
| I'm a Canadian citizen. But I always want to feel at home in Sri Lanka. I'm a member of both countries. |
| When you're writing, it's as if you're within a kind of closed world. |
| Right now, I have no idea what I will write or if I will write again. |
| I don't see novels ending with any real sense of closure. |
| To write about someone like myself would be very limiting. |
| It doubles your perception, to write from the point of view of someone you're not. |
| As a writer, one is busy with archaeology. |
| You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else. |
| 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 tend not to know what the plot is or the story is or even the theme. Those things come later, for me. |
| You want to suggest something new, but at the same time, resolve the drama of the action in the novel. |
| 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. |
