Quotes by Sri Lankan Authors

I would plead into the darkness, where are they, bring them back
Sonali Deraniyagala
China is constantly reinventing itself and so is the United States.
Patrick Mendis
Unlike Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, the United States was created by an enlightened band of Founding Fathers with a global vision for the new republic.
Patrick Mendis
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke
We are naked, but we think we are not; we are wrong, but think we are correct. We are misled but we think we are properly guided. We think we have leaders but in reality we do not. What we have are tyrants.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
We have passed some of the dirtiest chapters of mankind. Perhaps we are heading towards further inhuman treatments in many places such as Syria and Palestine.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
We once again see the painful reality of the spineless political intelligentsia
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
If you want to denounce impunity then you have to start with denouncing the impunity that the regime enjoys.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence
Arthur C. Clarke
Because we want to know things, how the pieces fit. Talkers seduce, words direct us into corners. We want more than anything to grow and change. Brave new world.
Michael Ondaatje
Everything that ever happened to me that was important happened in the desert.
Michael Ondaatje
Many of the fundamental physical constants-which as far as one could see, God could have given any value He liked-are in fact very precised adjusted, or fine-tuned, to produce the only kind of Universe that makes our existence possible.
Arthur C. Clarke
The campus spreads around him like the verdant pleasure garden of an ancient king. He is enraptured by the enormous trees that lift branches like cathedral roofs overhead, shoot roots like polished ballroom floors underfoot. In the hot afternoons he leaves the crowded rooms to study under the protection of these spreading giants.
Nayomi Munaweera
It’s true that journalism in reality is not the journalism that we learnt in the university. It is far from it.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
You think that you are an iconoclast, but you’re not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character.
Michael Ondaatje
We all are wearing many hundred glasses of different colors. So, everyone see the world in different views. Somehow, if we could remove those glasses we can see the world with real colors. Name of the most difficult to remove glass is ‘there are permanent things of mine’.
Muditha Champika
Such bliss is not meant to last. In my husband's house, my children were my real gifts.
Ru Freeman
Excessive interest in pathological behavior was itself pathological
Arthur C. Clarke
This two-track plan of nationalism and development (in China) is a historically powerful weapon.
Patrick Mendis
Have we ever wondered a mothers silent cries? Her struggles, her fears and her worries? Do we ever have time for this in our busy lives? Have we ever thought of the sacrifices she has done in order to make our lives happier, and her dreams cut short to make our dreams come true?
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
This is the beginning of what we will come to call the Upstairs-Downstairs, Linga-Singha wars.
Nayomi Munaweera
Developing leaders without a model is like building a house without a plan.
Dr. Asoka Jinadasa
An empty mind is like a mirror that reflects reality in minute detail.
Dr. Asoka Jinadasa
Terrorism is just a whole other level of anger management issues.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi
He wished he understood where they come from: all the terrorists, religious revolutionists and hate-criminals. Did terrorizing entire communities of people help them sleep sound at night? Did it make them happy? Or are they just in for the attention? Have they nothing to lose? Or are they simply bored and spit balling issues that have always been there? Can all global acts of violence and terror be summed up, as just a whole other level of a mixture of bad parenting, psychological disorders and unattended anger management issues? Can they be treated, medically or spiritually? Are we waiting for the birth of another great visionary like Gautama Buddha, Jesus Christ or Prophet Muhammad, who will 'make the world a better place'? Or are we just too soaked in the idea that religion is a dying concept and spirituality is overrated? Is it too late? Are we too far behind? He wanted to know.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi
Terrorism & tourism rhyme with each other. Yet they don't go well alongside despite some similiarities shared. If one booms it is doomsday to the other. It is sheer juxtaposition between the two lucrative industries in the city of the lights left in a sorry plight.
Indeewara Jayawardane
It's not about who you think you know, but about who actually knows you.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
States were barred from financing their immigration systems with specific taxes on immigrants and transportation companies, leaving the continued existence of these state institutions to the general state fisc or the generosity of private charitable organizations interested in immigrant welfare and integration. The resource strain on states and charitable organizations placed enormous pressure on Congress to enact federal law.
Pratheepan Gulasekaram
If man can live in Manhattan, he can live anywhere.
Arthur C. Clarke
The beauty of the unexpected lies within the surprise of the momentum,not only at its tipping point, but also within all the moments waiting.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
A few years ago, a taxi driver told me about a club & a dog. A waiter taught me a lesson about ladders today. Life is full of class sessions for those who have passion & listen.
Indeewara Jayawardane
The Chinese construction of South Asia’s tallest edifice, the Lotus (a Lotus Sutra in Buddhism) Tower, both points to Beijing’s Peaceful Rise and unsettles some onlookers. For the nervous India and the United States, the cleverly designed and highly sophisticated rising communications tower is more than a Buddhist symbol of Peaceful Rise.
Patrick Mendis
In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-bestscience writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fictionwriter.[dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]
Arthur C. Clarke
…mysticism –perhaps the main aberration of the human mind.
Arthur C. Clarke
I have never seen anyone drink like he did. To say he drank with a vengeance is almost understating it: it was almost as if there was a thirst there, a deep and insatiable craving that made the man keep going back for more and more until he sat down in one corner with a bottle.
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
I was a man fifteen years older than she, you understand. I had reached that stage in life where I identified with cynical villains in a book.
Michael Ondaatje
A few years ago, a taxi driver told me about a club & a dog. A waiter spoke to me about ladders today. Life is full of lessons for those who listen.
Indeewara Jayawardane
He refused to believe in his own weaknesses, and with her he had not found a weakness to fit himself against.
Michael Ondaatje
Sports can unite worlds, tear down walls and transcend race, the past, and all probability. Unlike life, sport matters.
Shehan Karunatilaka
Now there are no priests or philosophers left, artists are the most important people in the world.
Roma Tearne
We don't know what we can achieve because no instruction manual accompanies our birth
Asoka Nimal Jinadasa
Long before Christopher Columbus, the celebrated Chinese navigator Zheng He travelled through the south and westward maritime routes in the Indian Ocean and established relations with more than thirty countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
Patrick Mendis
Artists are strange people. They make the world a beautiful place, and make others feel good, but they are a bunch of lonely people. Artists are people with unfulfilled, unrealistic dreams, lonely, and always searching for perfection.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
Michael O'Toole had no difficulty recognizing which questions in life should be answered by physics and which ones by religion.
Arthur C. Clarke
Balochistan was refused legitimacy for its nationhood with the creation of Pakistan due to the geographical location and the rich natural resources. The story would have been completely different if this has been a barren land.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Trump is a counter-product of the traditional political scheme.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The mentality of being the super power globally or regionally has contributed strongly to the development of very negative aspects to the political cohabitation the countries of the region than proving the capability of producing solutions that would meet the needs of the public.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Most people think the closet is a small room. They think you can touch the walls, touch the door, turn the handle, and walk free. But when you're inside it, the closet is vast. No walls, no door, just empty darkness stretching the length of the world.
S.J. Sindu
The traditional Confucian structure that invoked ideals of perfect human virtue for harmony must incorporate the rule of law for the modern era.
Patrick Mendis
Never expect appreciation for your hard work. Just continue, it will take you to the top.
Janaki Sooriyarachchi
Never expect appreciation for your hardwork. Make sure you are doing the right thing and just continue..
Janaki Sooriyarachchi
We all are wearing many hundred glasses of different colors. Therefore, everyone sees the world in different views. Somehow, if we could remove those glasses, we can see the world with real colors. Name of the most difficult to remove glass is ‘there are permanent things of mine.
Muditha Champika
After the struggle for sheer existence, they had no energy left for a civilization.
Arthur C. Clarke
Everything built with an art, May your eyes couldn't see it, but digital eye can.
Chanaka Satharasinghe.
Farther out beyond the reef, where the coral gives way to the true deep, at a certain time of day a tribe of flat silver fish gather in their thousands. To be there is to be surrounded by living shards of light. At a secret signal, all is chaos, a thousand mirrors shattering about him. Then the school speeds to sea and the boy is left in sedate water, a tug and pull of the body as comfortable as sitting in his father’s outspread sarong being sung to sleep.
Nayomi Munaweera
It was a crying shame!
Ru Freeman
Those who think of their house as only a ‘machine to live in’ should judge their point of view by that Neolithic man, who also lived in a house, but a house that embodied a cosmology.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
I am not in love with him, I am in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts.
Michael Ondaatje
There is no right and wrong, and precepts are for fools. Every thing is just as it is! And we must experience things without condemning them, because if we condemn them, then we are becoming too involved.
Ru Freeman
Strategy is about heading North while keeping an eye on the South.
Dr. Asoka Jinadasa