33 Romesh Gunesekera Quotes for You to Enjoy

Romesh Gunesekera

Author

Born: 1954

Live Me Time World Writing You

Related authors: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn C. S. Lewis Frederick Douglass George Orwell Helen Keller Henry David Thoreau Mark Twain Zig Ziglar

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

Most childhoods are full of anxiety, but that tends to get smoothed over, so you have a sense of nostalgia. Romesh Gunesekera

You Anxiety Sense Tends Over Most Get Childhoods Nostalgia Full

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

Time You Writing Past Sense Live Back Recognition About Retrieve Passing Yearning Loss Erosion Stop Nostalgia Things Bring

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

Me Technology World Dangerous Remember Safety Live Everything Seek About Seems Something Troubling Over Times Forget Fiction Desire

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

Time You Writing Distance City Something Within Subject Very Same Same Time Automatically Little Create Certain Your Connection Even

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. Romesh Gunesekera

You Back Way New Particular Particular Way Make Because Doing Go Bunch New Way Just Story Organised Means Novel Letters Origins

People who read fiction are different from other people because they are people who are interested in an imagined world. Romesh Gunesekera

People World Other Read Because Different Fiction Interested Who Imagined

I don't think I knew I would be a writer. I wanted to become a writer, and I tried to write. Romesh Gunesekera

Become Think Would Would-Be Tried Write Writer Knew Wanted

With 'Noontide Toll', I wanted to cater to a single story but also collectively more than a single story. Romesh Gunesekera

Single Collectively More Cater Also Than Wanted Story Toll

I was very lucky - it wasn't a question of being wealthy; my father was just extremely lucky with the couple of jobs he got. So we got a chance to travel when nobody else could travel. Romesh Gunesekera

Travel Father Else Extremely Jobs Wealthy Could He Nobody Nobody Else Couple Got Question Very Just Being Lucky Chance

I've met writers who wanted to be writers from the age of six, but I certainly had no feelings like that. It was only in the Philippines when I was about 15 that I started reading books by very contemporary writers of the Beatnik generation. Romesh Gunesekera

I never expected to earn money out of writing. In fact, the idea of getting published was too bourgeois. Then, in England, I realised that writing a book was something you could do without it being laughable. Romesh Gunesekera

You Book Writing Money Too Earn Laughable Out Something Fact Could Never Idea Bourgeois Without Expected Getting Being In Fact Realised Then England Published

I like inventing things when I write rather than autobiography. Romesh Gunesekera

Rather Inventing Write Like Than Autobiography Things

As a youngster, I think I said I wanted to be a journalist, but that's a disguise for being a writer. Romesh Gunesekera

Disguise Journalist Think Writer Said Being Wanted Youngster

Novels are the means by which we can escape the moment we are imprisoned in, but at the same time, the roots of a novel are in the world in which it is written. We write, and we read, to understand the world we live in. Romesh Gunesekera

Time World Live Write Written Read Understand Imprisoned Escape Same Same Time Which Roots Means Moment Novel Novels

Sri Lankans of every kind, overwhelmingly the poorest, have been bombed by one side or the other for decades. Romesh Gunesekera

Every Other Side Kind Been Decades Poorest Bombed

I must believe that in words we will find what in fury we cannot. Romesh Gunesekera

Words Will Believe Fury We Cannot Must Find Cannot

'Commonwealth' is not a word I ever used growing up in Colombo. There, in the late 1950s, it would have meant little more than New Zealand lamb and Anchor butter at the cold stores. Romesh Gunesekera

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