Quotes by Sri Lankan Authors - Page 4

What many people do not understand is: It's not about who you think you know, but about who actually knows you. So better start giving today, be it giving everything at your job, or giving out lunch to that man. Start giving, and the world will know your true character!
Akilnathan Logeswaran
How can you smile as though your whole life hasn't capsized
Michael Ondaatje
As the doctors told him, he wanted to scream out loud and cry. He held his heavy head up and clenched his teeth and fists. “Men don’t cry,” his grandpa used to say. “Men don’t cry.” �8But he cried. Like a baby. He cried till he could feel cracks in his heart as he breathed. He cried till he knew he would never love again.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi
Some love stories has no end, no path or no name, but they are 'love stories' too.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
There is a certain new ferocity in her eyes now. A certain new thing that was not there before. I recognize it as scar tissue. When a bone breaks, it heals stronger in the cracks. I realize this is what is happening to her heart.
Nayomi Munaweera
If a lion cub thinks it is a kitten, it will grow up catching mice.
Dr. Asoka Jinadasa
I know the devices of a demon. I was taught as a child about the demon lover. I was told about a beautiful temptress who came to a young man's room. And he, if he were wise, would demand that she turn around, because demons and witches have no back, only what they wish to present to you.
Michael Ondaatje
Here. Where I am anonymous and alone in a white room with no history and no parading. So I can make something unknown in the shape of this room. Where I am King of Corners.
Michael Ondaatje
The desert could not be claimed or owned–it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names... Its caravans, those strange rambling feasts and cultures, left nothing behind, not an ember. All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into landscape.
Michael Ondaatje
I once traveled with a guide who was taking me to Faya. He didn't speak for nine hours. At the end of it he pointed to the horizon and said, 'Faya!' That was a good day.
Michael Ondaatje
Those less fortunate eat dried fish while the truly destitute fight with the spiny shells of crabs or lobsters. Decades later, my father will find it incomprehensible that Americans crave what in his childhood was considered repugnant fare.
Nayomi Munaweera
Scientists are human—they're as biased as any other group. But they do have one great advantage in that science is a self-correcting process.
Cyril Ponnamperuma
But the characteristic that is truly special about our species...[is] our ability to model our world and understand both it and where we fit into its overall scheme....
Arthur C. Clarke
In Confucian thought, individuals practice moral virtue both by restraining themselves and pursuing their own interests. This is a dual push-and-pull process. In today’s China, the latter is taken care of by capitalism and commerce. The former, however, needs to be taken care of by the rule of law. Otherwise, the system of governance is corrupted by unrestrained individual desires and selective enforcement of ‘virtue’ or law.
Patrick Mendis
The physics of gravity was not reserved only for large celestial objects to efficiently exert.
Gayendra Abeywardane
On a fulcrum in my chest, grief and relief are balanced in equal measure.
Nayomi Munaweera
Our innocent kids undergo much trouble. Not only do the children of high caste families look down upon our children calling them low caste brats, but even some teachers ridicule them. They beat our children for no reason.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
Even though we are supposed to be low caste and poor our vote also has the same value and validity as that of great people.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
She believed that people born to low caste families were meant to suffer. That was their karma. She had learnt that those who indulge in sinful activities in their previous birth, especially those who humiliated others, would be reborn to low caste families. She firmly believed also that one has to suffer until the sin was paid for through suffering and good deeds.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
Families could often trace their lineage back several centuries. Their livelihood was earned from drum playing, a service considered to be dis-respectable. As members of a low caste, the drummers were forbidden to build decent houses. There were allowed to build wattle and daub huts, and to live rent-free on their patrons' properties. The right to own the country's land was restricted in this manner, a vicious condition that arose through tradition and was reinforced by law. Patterns of financial power and political hierarchy existed hand in hand.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
Generally, that humble piece of furniture placed on the front veranda of the house officially belonged to the man of the household; the women never slept on it.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
In a front of each home garden the villagers fixed a triangular wooden lamp-house on the top of a pole planted on the ground to hold a small statue of Lord Buddha and some deities. They used to offer flowers at this small shrine and light a tiny clay oil lamp.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
Master Salamon usually set off a little later as neither he nor other male members of their community were in the habit of walking on the road alongside their wives.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
The villagers considered it lucky to make the New Year's first money transaction with her because she was a prosperous person.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
When he had accompanied his father on drumming errands he noticed how high caste men and women treated them as inferior. They had to enter from the back door and wait near the kitchen or at a side veranda and sit on low benches or reed mats. They were never offered a decent seat. At meals times they were never invited to eat at the main table with the family or other guests. Instead, they had to eat the food served to them on the reed mat. This they ate in silence while the patrons sat at a lavishly laid table and enjoyed their food amidst chat and cheer.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
Killing life in whatever way, will drag you along the hell's way.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
If the woman has the physical fitness and the meritorious luck to bear his children, the family was a fortunate one. Villagers always looked at sterility with a squinted eye, and its fault and the misfortune lay solely on the woman's part. As such, a childless woman often became culprit for her entire life.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
Physical beauty or sexual attraction in a woman was not a criterion in deciding, strengthening, or the survival of such relationships of these villagers.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
Maggie was ten years younger than him. Being cross-cousins, they lived in the same compound, in the same two houses that still existed. When their parents told him to take her for his wife, there was nothing for him to think deep into the matter. They simply obeyed their parents. Accordingly, she came over to sleep in his house. In this, manner they remained as man and wife for a period of over thirty years.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
Carolina protected her so that Suneetha should remain a virgin until her wedding night. The worth of such purity in character was immeasurable in this society and culture. Therefore, she never even allowed Suneetha to go with other village girls when they went to the desolate cinnamon gardens to gather firewood.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
Her heart filled with boundless love that surged anew for her father. She felt like rushing to him and planting a quick kiss on his cheek the way she used to when she was a small girl. However, these villagers are not in the habit of kissing their offspring after they grow up. They show their love and affection by stroking their heads, addressing them in endearing words and blessing them.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
According to the Buddha's doctrine that they believed in, it was not the caste that defined a person high or low. It was one's deeds that mattered.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
A new movement reinforced by activists such as Buddhist monks, physicians who practised traditional medicine, teachers, farmers, and laborers brought Prime Minister Bandaranaike into the political helm. The leaders of the Davulawatta community considered this election a personal achievement. They saw this as a people's government and appreciated its genuine interest in fulfilling the needs of the common people. They trusted that the present government would eradicate poverty and the caste discrimination, and work to promote self-esteem.
Swarnakanthi Rajapakse
Jan had always been a good pianist, and now he was the finest in the world.
Arthur C. Clarke
But most of the time, with a contented resignation that comes normally to a man only at the end of a long and busy life, he sat before the keyboard and filled the air with his beloved Bach. Perhaps he was deceiving himself, perhaps this was some merciful trick of the mind but now it seemed to Jan that this what he had always wished to do. His secret ambition had at last dared to emerge into the full light of consciousness. Jan had always been a good pianist, and now he was the finest in the world.
Arthur C. Clarke
We own the country we grow up in, or we are aliens and invaders.
Michael Ondaatje
And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.
Arthur C. Clarke
Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.
Arthur C. Clarke
Just like the cosmonauts and their pee plants, all we have is each other.
Arthur C. Clarke
(...)Through the ship's telescopes, he had watched the death of the solar system. With his own eyes, he had seen the volcanoes of Mars erupt for the first time in a billion years; Venus briefly naked as her atmosphere was blasted into space before she herself was consumed; the gas giants exploding into incandescent fireballs. But these were empty, meaningless spectacles compared with the tragedy of Earth.That, too, he had watched through the lenses of cameras that had survived a few minutes longer than the devoted men who had sacrificed the last moments of their lives to set them up. He had seen ...... the Great Pyramid, glowing dully red before it slumped into a puddle of molten stone ...... the floor of the Atlantic, baked rock-hard in seconds, before it was submerged again, by the lava gushing from the volcanoes of the Mid-ocean Rift...... the Moon rising above the flaming forests of Brazil and now itself shining almost as brilliantly as had the Sun, on its last setting, only minutes before ...... the continent of Antarctica emerging briefly after its long burial, as the kilometres of ancient ice were burned away ...... the mighty central span of the Gibraltar Bridge, melting even as it slumped downward through the burning air ...In that last century the Earth was haunted with ghosts - not of the dead, but of those who now could never be born. For five hundred years the birthrate had been held at a level that would reduce the human population to a few millions when the end finally came. Whole cities - even countries - had been deserted as mankind huddled together for History's closing act.
Arthur C. Clarke
Once, I believed that space couldhave no power over faith, just as I believed the heavens declared the glory of God’shandwork. Now I have seen that handwork, and my faith is sorely troubled.
Arthur C. Clarke
Sometimes, during the lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to this radiation. He would turn up the gain until the room filled with a crackling, hissing roar; out of this background, at irregular intervals, emerged brief whistles and peeps like the cries of demented birds. It was an eerie sound, for it had nothing to do with Man; it was as lonely and meaningless as the murmur of waves on a beach, or the distant crash of thunder beyond the horizon.
Arthur C. Clarke
Imagine that every man’s mind is an island, surrounded by ocean. Each seems isolated, yet in reality all are linked by the bedrock from which they spring. If the ocean were to vanish, that would be the end of the islands. They would all be part of one continent, but the individuality would have gone
Arthur C. Clarke
Oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?
Arthur C. Clarke
Even more alarming were persistent rumors that someone had smuggled an Emotion Amplifier on board 'Mentor'. The so-called joy machines were banned on all planets, except under strict medical control; but there would always be people to whom reality was not good enough, and who would want to try something better.
Arthur C. Clarke
..the happy hum of humanity.
Arthur C. Clarke
Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favourite of the Sun's children.
Arthur C. Clarke
In this universe the night was falling; the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered; and along the path he once had followed, Man would one day go again.
Arthur C. Clarke
In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.
Arthur C. Clarke
And the Buddha pointed out that his confusion was justified, for 'the dharma is profound, difficult to see, difficult to understand, peaceful, excellent, beyond the sphere of logic, subtle, and to be understood by the wise'. The reason for this is that it is not readily comprehended by one who holds a different view and has different learnings and inclinations, different involvements and instruction. It is clear from this statement that the conception of nibbāna in beyond logical reasoning, not because it is an Ultimate Reality transcending logic, but because logic or reason, being the 'slave of passions', makes it difficult for one who has a passion for an alien tradition to understand the conception of nibbāna.
David J. Kalupahana
What I have sought is to understand what has been said.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
The major dilemma is that we tend to listen to reply, while all we should do is: listen to understand and feel.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
A writer is someone who analyses the society, people and the world around him or her. Simply a writer is someone who pays attention to the utmost simple things happening around him or her. I believe the best things about being a writer is, you are going to live forever through your work, in your books, in the hearts of your readers, in your characters.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
Writing gives me wings.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
I was asked, ‘When is the next book release, it’s been over a year since the last book release, have you given up writing?” Again a senseless question by a Sri Lankan journalist. Does it mean that being a writer means you have to release a book every month? Do they count a writer’s success by the quantity of books or the quality of the work? I am concerned about the quality of work, not the quantity of books that I release. One can publish hundreds of books within a couple of years today as technology is advance and cheap, but keeping the quality of the work is something you cannot depend of technology and money. It is the quality of thinking of the writer which should reflect through their work. I have been in the field for almost 2 and a half years, learnt a lot through trial and error, learn through my mistakes. I am no longer bothered about the number of books I write, how much I spend or how much I earn, my only focus is to do something quality which will last long, even after I am gone, something that will touch the soul of the readers. Will these journalists understand a soul of an artist? In this big dirty game of ‘media mafia’, ‘artists’ are only marketing ideas.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
Writers should be heard, not seen.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
Being a famous writer is great. But there is a limit for it. For what extend can you be famous, and what would you achieve? True, your books will be best sellers, your blog writings and tweets will be hits, fans will love you, and what next? We all die to reach ‘there’ as budding writers, but once we reach ‘it’, we think, what next? Is this what we wanted all our lives? To grab all the leading awards, write best sellers, to be loved, to be known and heard? Will they help us achieve inner peace? I believe the utmost important thing is achieving inner peace, not money and fame. A writer should write to achieve inner peace forgetting all other things. Money, fame, fans are not going to last forever, but inner peace is.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
I believe almost every author have gone through the terribly uncomfortable period between the time of shedding the seeds of a story and waiting to see it flourish as a published book, spending hours watering and fertilizing it. This is a dreadful period, frustrating and depressing.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
the heart is an organ of fire
Michael Ondaatje
Aliganaya - 'the embraceduring an intoxicated walk'or 'sudden arousalwhile driving over speed bumps
Michael Ondaatje