Artists can help re-imagine a conflict and start a dialogue. Romesh Gunesekera More Quotes by Romesh Gunesekera More Quotes From Romesh Gunesekera A novel means a new way of doing a story Romesh Gunesekera storiesmeanway Every Sri Lankan, and almost every visitor to Sri Lanka, carries a longing for the place in some small form - hiraeth, the Welsh call it - wherever they go and whatever their background. It binds them however much the war and politics might try to divide them. Romesh Gunesekera smallplacepoliticswar A passenger on a road journey is in the hands of a driver; a reader embarking on a book is in the hands of a narrator. Romesh Gunesekera roadjourneybookhands Sri Lanka is an island that everyone loves at some level inside themselves. A very special island that travellers, from Sinbad to Marco Polo, dreamed about. A place where the contours of the land itself forms a kind of sinewy poetry. Romesh Gunesekera islandplacepoetryspecial To come to England in the 1970s was to return to this strange other-world of half-known history. I found the imperial architecture curiously familiar: the post office, the town hall, the botanic gardens. Romesh Gunesekera strangearchitectureofficehistory Sri Lanka is a part of my background: it's not where I live, but it's what I want to explore. And I find it works very well to explore through fiction. Romesh Gunesekera explorelivefindwant I probably felt most out of place as a young kid growing up in Sri Lanka. My mental world was somewhere else, partly because of reading and daydreaming. Romesh Gunesekera placegrowing-upreadingworld Whether we live in Sri Lanka or Malaysia or India, the U.K. or the U.S., we face similar issues of understanding, remembering the past that has made us and seeing the future we want. Romesh Gunesekera livefacefuturepast I was thinking of writers living in East Europe before the Berlin Wall came down. They wrote fantastic stuff but were dealing with a situation that was almost impossible to deal with, but they found a way. Romesh Gunesekera downimpossiblewaythinking At 16, I started reading trashy stuff, anything slightly naughty and risque. Romesh Gunesekera startedanythingnaughtyreading The nationalist movement supported Sinhala by suppressing Tamil; there were competing nationalisms. It was a fundamental mistake to make parallel streams in education - or a calculated political gamble. Politicians were playing with it. Romesh Gunesekera playingpoliticalmistakeeducation Writing is incredibly important to me as a way of handling the world, understanding how it works. Romesh Gunesekera meunderstandingwayworld Most childhoods are full of anxiety, but that tends to get smoothed over, so you have a sense of nostalgia. Romesh Gunesekera overyouanxietynostalgia In the sense that writing is to retrieve the past and stop the passing of time, all writing is about loss. It's not nostalgia in the sense of yearning to bring back the past, but recognition of the erosion of things as you live. Romesh Gunesekera liveyoutimepast For me, there is urgency in fiction, even though writing is, in itself, an act against the corrosiveness of time. Romesh Gunesekera actmewritingtime It seems to me that we live in dangerous times all over the world: we have the technology to remember everything but a desire to forget the troubling and to seek the safety of numbness. Fiction can do something about that. Romesh Gunesekera metechnologyrememberworld Whether it is better to forget and let wounds heal or remember and learn from the past is a crucial question for all of us, wherever we are. Romesh Gunesekera betterforgetrememberpast To my mind, forgetting is a risky strategy for living. Memory is essential to us. It is DNA. We need to remember, and we need to imagine. That's why we have books, writing, fiction. Romesh Gunesekera memorymindwritingremember If you are writing something, you automatically create a certain distance. It can be very little. Even within the same city you imaginatively have a certain distance from your subject, and at the same time, you have to have a connection. Romesh Gunesekera cityyouwritingtime 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. Romesh Gunesekera youfuturepowerpast
