Quotes by Sri Lankan Authors - Page 7

...sometimes we enter art to hide within it. It is where we can go to save ourselves, where a third-person voice protects us.
Michael Ondaatje
We can be the very first generation which fails to see the logic or pride in defining ourselves by anything else but what is found within ourselves: our values
Akilnathan Logeswaran
Titles don’t mean anything. What really matters is the impact you make on a daily basis!
Akilnathan Logeswaran
In a world full of lions and tigers entertaining the masses, have you ever seen a wolf performing in a circus?
Akilnathan Logeswaran
Life is not about who you know, but rather about who knows you & what you stand for. Show the world with presence, actions & the way you lead your life, who you are.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
Within this historic and optimistic future in mind, I have made no value judgment of the destiny bestowed on each nation. For all this, however, leadership matters; so do the institutional structures and the system of political governance.
Patrick Mendis
[T]hese leaders must not believe they are actually being watched, for their behavior in no way reflects the possible existence of a set of values or ethical laws that supersedes their own dominion.
Arthur C. Clarke
At birth and at dawn for each and every dayit triumphs over the eclipse.It is the very first thing that you see.Its power is blinding at first, anon it opens our eyes to the allure of the world.Each moment it breathes life into us,warms our souls and colors our skin.At gloaming it seems to wane,while it privily awaits a timeto give birth to a new circle of life.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
Honestly, I never really understood the glorification of Fridays & weekends. I don't want to build a life and career, where I spent five days a week waiting for the weekend. No! I want to enjoy my life, and don't wish any weekday away. I want each day to matter to me, in some way, even if it's a small tiny way. I love my life. Everyday. That's the spirit we should convey all around us.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
Magic is seeing wonder in nature's every little thing, seeing how wonderful the fireflies are and how magical are the dragonflies.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
We often seek beauty in the outside, in the unknown, and often lack to realize the sheer beauty right in front of our very eyes, back home.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
You built your walls too, she tells him. So I have my wall. She says it glittering in a beauty he cannot stand. She with her beautiful clothes with her pale face that laughs at everyone who smiles at her...
Michael Ondaatje
Leaders are not the ones with the right position or a proclaimed or given title, the actual leaders are the people who start acting, who step up, who do change, no matter in what way or how small!
Akilnathan Logeswaran
Today I prayed for Boston, for America, my home away from home. Today, I realized how lucky we Sri Lankans are to have peace in our country. How I feel today, hearing of the bombs going off in the city brings back memories of how I used to feel four years ago in Sri Lanka when the LTTE was setting off bombs all around Colombo. That feeling I used to get when I hear about a bomb blast, the goosebumps, the school evacuation drills, the breaking news footage, and most of all, that fear we Sri Lankans used to feel, every second of everyday, it all came back to me today. Thank you God for bringing peace to my country, look after America the way you did Sri Lanka.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi
But nothing is said of the closeness between two people: how they grew in the shade of each other's presence. No one speaks of that exchange of gift and character --- the way a person took on and recognized in himself the smile of a lover. Individuals are seen only in the context of these swirling social tides.
Michael Ondaatje
Beautiful women have a following all their own. If that sounds misogynistic, I’m sorry, that’s the way the world works. Homer said the Greeks went to war over a woman. I can’t get a battle, but I can get a few hundred thousand views with the right face in a skirt.
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
It is important for women to do something about what they see.
Roma Tearne
She is a woman of honour and smartness whose wild leaves out luck, always taking risks, and there is something in her brow now, that only she can recognize in a mirror. Ideal and idealistic in that shiny dark hair! People fall in love with her. She is a woman I don’t know well enough to hold in my wing, if writers have wings, to harbour for the rest of my life.
Michael Ondaatje
Nothing can be changed in the system when the system itself is revolting against those who opposed violence.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
How can you cry for others’ struggles when you are facilitating mayhem in your own land?
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
A society is driven by “social fear” always produces the seeds of doubt and unhappiness.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The era of revolution by military means produced a greater degree of desperation and frustration. This was brought to an end by the people.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The most fundamental problem is not that we don’t have a system to run but those with knowledge are cynically manipulating the system for petty personal desires.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
When the day to day life is suppressing you, how could you put your moral values and will power to the realm of life?
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Reconciliation without truth is nothing but a smokescreen
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
The world I grew up in was a brutal one. The murder rate was once seven people for every hundred thousand. The average American on minimum wage could barely afford to keep themselves alive on canned food. Millions died over private oil fortunes. Wealthy men and women ran the world for profit. Fools and charlatans got into our Parliaments and set the world on fire. We had everything on paper - checks, balances, freedom, democracy - and yet to live was to be a slave.
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
The only things I can’t offer you are children and politicians: the first is illegal and the second is expensive
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
Didn’t somebody once say ‘Politics is the art of the possible’?” “Quite true—which is why only second-rate minds go into it. Genius likes to challenge the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
I have been seeing dragons again.Last night, hunched on a beaver dam,one held a body like a badly held cocktail;his tail, keeping the beat of a waltz,sent a morse of ripples to my canoe.They are not richly brightbut muted like dawnsor the vague sheen on a fly's wing.Their old flesh drags in foldsas they drop into grey pools,strain behind a tree.Finally the others saw one today, trapped,tangled in our badminton net.The minute eyes shuddered deep in the creased facewhile his throat, strangely fierce, stretchedto release an extinct burning inside:pathetic loud whispers as four of usand the excited spaniel surrounded him.
Michael Ondaatje
China has no choice but to emulate the power of America’s founding ideas and its journey through the universal values of democratic freedom and individual rights.
Patrick Mendis
there are words inside me that don’t want to hide anymore.Perfect or not, they don’t want to be safe for much longer.They want to be free.
Gayendra Abeywardane
Why are you not smarter? It's only the rich who can't afford to be smart. They're compromised. They got locked years ago into privilege. They have to protect their belongings. No one is meaner than the rich. Trust me. But they have to follow the rules of their shitty civilised world. They declare war, they have honour, and they can't leave. But you two. We three. We're free.
Michael Ondaatje
Don't leave the dream, lead your dreams!
Akilnathan Logeswaran
We would sneer sometimes at how pointless it all was, all those bourgeois souls wrapping themselves in luxury, isolating themselves from the raw edges of the word; and in between puffs, we would smile, and dream of owning those streets, dreaming the same dreams that we scorned others for.
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed with her like a child with schoolbooks and pencils. The day seems to have no order until these times, which are like a ledger for her, her body full of stories and situations.
Michael Ondaatje
She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.
Michael Ondaatje
The Chilcot report is a revelation of injustice under the cloak of Aid. The Chilcot report is a sorry report on the current state of humanity. So the ultimate question here is – what are we going to achieve out of the sorry reports when “sorry” has no meaning in action?
Nilantha Ilangamuwa
Oh, the child you threatened once, the young shoot you stepped on, the Tamil you teased, is standing with a gun in front of you. His presence is taking you by surprise. How can you understand that it is the occupier who creates a poorali? You once dealt the blow. Now you are imprisoned. When a fox tries to eat the goat, the goat must turn into a tiger and leap. That is the edict of the times.
Malaravan
Girls with poison necklacesto save themselves from torture.Just as women wear amuletswhich hold their rolled up fortunestranscribed on ola leaf.
Michael Ondaatje
She talks in her most sedate voice, attempting to alleviate out fears, soothe our anxiety. She knows that if we are to survive watching this war from a distance, as spectators, we do not have the privilege of indignation or anxiety.
Nayomi Munaweera
In these myriad ways, we carved out our lives in Los Angeles. Yet falling asleep was often an act of travel, taking me quickly by the hand so that I am instantly surrounded by verdant foliage, the ocean's emerald roar, the voices of Alice, Mala, our grandmother. Those most familiar and beloved of women.But there are also nightmares. Over and over I dream of a small house, a glittering lagoon, a mango tree, and a young girl. She stands before me and her large bruised eyes do not leave mine. When she unpins the sari fold at her shoulder and pulls it away from her, I see sunset-colored bruises on her delicate clavicles. When she undoes her sari blouse, I see the grenades tucked like extra breasts under her own. It is grotesque. I wake trembling, and her eyes stays with me for hours.
Nayomi Munaweera
I've lived through a war. I've seen burning corpses on the road side. And yes, I will tell you, peace is the only way out.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi
All is fair in fashion and war.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi
Once you have been tortured, you can never belong in this world. There is no place that ever be your home.
Roma Tearne
I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occuopation.
Michael Ondaatje
Ti­tles are granted or in­her­ited, no­bil­ity isn't. Whatever paper we receive, be it of material or immaterial value – it will never exceed the value of your character being loved by people!
Akilnathan Logeswaran
here was a particular kind of energy in those early days, something I've only really found in startups. The regulars - the boring 9-to-5 people - haven’t invaded the world yet. All around you are people who practically buzz with mental adrenaline - the kind of people who sneer at words like policy and dress code and fill the office at nights with pizza and bad jokes and the relentless tip-tack-clack of keyboards. They push boundaries, turn small ideas into game-changers and small arguments into fistfights.No company can last forever this way: it’s a bit like being in a cage. Eventually the strange ones move out and give way to order and conformity and all the things that make for a smoothly operating machine. But that brief chaos is what really gives a company its soul.
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
Every New Yorker thinks they’re automatically better than everyone else in every other city on the planet: even their unnems were a better class of beggars.
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
I have always loved being behind the camera. I love how it sets you apart in a crowd, so that you can float at the edges, pausing only occasionally to capture a moment.In its own way it’s easier than writing. As a writer, I have to know people, to talk to them, to barge into silences with a dozen of those little lighthearted quips that lead up to a conversation. And even then, they’re guarded around you. Nobody wants their drunken conversation written down somewhere.Being a photographer is different. People come to you. They smile. They flirt. They make sure you see only their best side. Nobody wants to upset the camera.
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne
For twenty-seven years I was told and believed it to be true, that if you really liked someone, you'd wish her/him to 'stay the way s/he is'.Today I know that I was not wrong, but my view was limited. If I really like someone today, I don't want them to merely stay that way, I want them to grow, to discover their potential, and am excited to see who they choose to become.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.
Arthur C. Clarke
Light is invisible until it strikes an object. So is your love until you share it.
Dr. Asoka Jinadasa
Love is the gateway to cosmic energy and wisdom.
Dr. Asoka Jinadasa
Love dissolves the separation between ‘you’ and ‘me’.
Dr. Asoka Jinadasa
You must love yourself before you can love others.
Dr. Asoka Jinadasa
Passion is the fuel that drives ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results by aligning their hearts, minds, beliefs and efforts.
Dr. Asoka Jinadasa
Some dangers are so spectacular and so much beyond normal experience that the mind refuses to accept them as real, and watches the approach of doom without any sense of apprehension. The man who looks at the onrushing tidal wave, the descending avalanche, or the spinning funnel of the tornado, yet makes no attempt to flee, is not necessarily paralyzed with fright or resigned to an unavoidable fate. He may simply be unable to believe that the message of his eyes concerns him personally. It is all happening to somebody else.
Arthur C. Clarke
The name one gives is inessential.What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by other name would smell as sweet.
Walpola Rahula
We work very hard to have what Buddha gave up to become enlightened. Does that mean we are benighted?
Rohan and Mohan Perera
What you gain another will lose, for What is there is all there is. What you share another will have, for What is there is enough for all.
Rohan and Mohan Perera