Quotes from Shyam Selvadurai

I believe that everything we think and feel and do produces a result and that we have to deal with that result - that result is then something that produces another result, so on and so forth, so yes, I do believe in causality.

I knew I had to write about Canada. I just could not find in literature any examples of the immigrant experience that I've had.

She is just a woman who life has made different. This is her strange way of trying to love you.

It doesn't matter," she said. "Life is full of stupid things and sometimes we just have to do them.

Yet those Sundays, when I was seven, marked the beginning of my exile from the world I loved. Like a ship that leaves a port for the vast expanse of sea, those much looked forward to days took me away from the safe harbour of childhood towards the precarious waters of adult life.

Of the three of us, I alone was allowed to enter Amma's bedroom and watch her get dressed for special occasions. It was an experience I considered almost religious, for, even though I adored the goddesses of the local cinema, Amma was the final statement in female beauty for me.

I sat on the verandah steps and wept for the loss of my home, for everything that I held to be precious. I tried to muffle the sound of my weeping, but my voice cried out loudly as if it were the only weapon I had against those who had destroyed my life.

I am tired of these escape plans. I'm tired of everything. I just want it all to end.

I glanced at the sari lying on the rock where I had thrown it and I knew that I would never enter the girls' world again.

I did not know it at the time, but we would never see Jegan again.

Ammachi. Like the earth-goddess in the folktales, she was not to be disturbed from her tranquillity. To do so would have been the cause of a catastrophic earthquake. In order to minimize interference by either Ammachi or Janaki, we had developed and refined a system of handling conflict and settling disputes ourselves. Two things formed the framework of this system: territoriality and leadership.

There was something ironic about that. Amma comforting Chithra Aunty. Yet I understood it. Chithra Aunty was free to cry. We couldn't, for if we started we would never stop.

I find it impossible to imagine that the world will ever be normal again.

On a personal level, I think the political situation in Sri Lanka is very much on the mind of Sri Lankans in Canada. They have family here and family back home, and it's possible they've lost members in any one of those tremendous, unbearable events there.

In the late 20th century, it became possible to travel between cultures, between the old world and the new, with great ease. So when you go back, you take the changed person with you who, in turn, changes things that otherwise might have stayed the same.

When we first moved to Scarborough, there was one Sri Lankan grocery store - now there's a take-out on every corner, each with some specialty or another. You can get what you want the way you want it, and that's very different from the way it used to be.

For me, growing up, I felt like there was something fatally and tragically flawed in my nature and that it was my duty to try to avoid falling for that vice.