Quotes from Romesh Gunesekera

Who controls the present controls the past. There's a power structure, if you like, between the present and the past and the future, and that's what I'm interested in.

A novel means a new way of doing a story. If you go back the origins of a novel, 'Clarissa' - that's not a novel; it's just a bunch of letters. But it isn't! Because it's organised in a particular way! A novel is what you make of it.

When I was growing up, I don't think I knew any other child who had been out of Sri Lanka.