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Sri Lanka Quotes

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Sri Lanka Quotes

“In Sri Lanka, when two strangers meet, they ask a series of questions that reveal family, ancestral village, and blood ties until they arrive at a common friend or relative. Then they say, "Those are our people, so you are our people." It's a small place. Everyone knows everyone. "But in America, there are no such namings; it is possible to slip and slide here. It is possible to get lost in the nameless multitudes. There are no ropes binding one, holding one to the earth. Unbound by place or name, one is aware that it is possible to drift out into the atmosphere and beyond that, into the solitary darkness where there is no oxygen.”

CommunityFamilyRespectFamily RelationshipsAncestryDisplacementSri LankaImmigration Experience
Book:What Lies Between Us
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“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.”

LifeWarGodChangeTerrorismUsaWorld PeaceBostonSri LankaMarothon
Author:Thisuri Wanniarachchi
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“In Sri Lanka, nothing succeeds like death-it is the ultimate validation. The man you hate in life becomes instantly your idol in death. Any neglected artist can take heart; reviled whilst alive, he only has to wait patiently for death to become the national hero he has always yearned to be.”

DeathLossDeath Of A Loved OneSri LankaDeath Of A ParentAshok FerreySri Lankan AuthorsThe Unmarriageable Man
Book:The Unmarriageable Man: A Novel
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“War crimes, you say? No matter how many policies you put on paper, in reality, there are no rights and wrongs in war. War itself is a crime. War cannot be justified. I believe, the only people, in this world, whose opinions matter, are the ones who go the extra mile to help other people expecting nothing in return. Soldiers who fight fiercely for their country, the doctors in Sri Lanka's public hospitals attending to hundreds of patients at a time for no extra pay , the nuns who voluntarily teach English and math to children of refugee camps in the north, the monks who collect food to feed entire villages during crises, they are the people worth listening to, their opinion matters. So find me one of them who will say: they wish the war didn't end in 2009, that they wish Sri Lanka was divided into two parts. Find me one of them who agrees with the international war crime allegations against Sri Lanka, and I will listen. But I will not listen to the opinions of those who are paid to find faults in a war they were never a part of, a war they never experienced themselves. I will not listen to the opinions of those who watched the war on tv or read about it on the internet or were moved by a documentary on Al Jazeera. The war is over. The damage is done. Let Sri Lanka move on. So our children will never have to see what we've seen.”

WarInspirationWar CrimesSri LankaPaulo CoelhoIfeArundati Roy
Author:Thisuri Wanniarachchi
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“What struck me, in reading the reports from Sri Lanka, was the mild disgrace of belonging to our imperfectly evolved species in the first place. People who had just seen their neighbors swept away would tell the reporters that they knew a judgment had been coming, because the Christians had used alcohol and meat at Christmas or because ... well, yet again you can fill in the blanks for yourself. It was interesting, though, to notice that the Buddhists were often the worst. Contentedly patting an image of the chubby lord on her fencepost, a woman told the New York Times that those who were not similarly protected had been erased, while her house was still standing. There were enough such comments, almost identically phrased, to make it seem certain that the Buddhist authorities had been promulgating this consoling and insane and nasty view. That would not surprise me.”

ReligionChristianityAtheismBuddhismEvolutionAlcoholChristmasHuman RaceVegetarianismEarthquakesTsunamiSri LankaNatural DisastersThe New York Times2004 Earthquake And TsunamiChristian VegetarianismChristianity And Alcohol
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“For a long time the horror that these images elicited remained buried inside him. A morbid reality he was constantly feeding and yet he was unable to express. As though unable to fully believe or understand what they depicted. It was only when the channel 4 documentary came out in 2011, accusing the government of war crimes and genocide, when later that year the UN published its report, giving an estimate of how many civilians had died that he was finally able to speak about what had happened. To accept that the images he had become obsessed with were not some strange perverted creation of his subconscious life but they represented things that had really happened in the country he was from. Even now he felt ashamed thinking about his reluctance to acknowledge the magnitude of what had happened at the end of the war. As though he had been hesitating to believe the evidence on his computer screen because his own poor violated stateless people were the ones alleging it. As though he was unable to take the suffering of his own people seriously till it was validated by the panel of foreign authority experts, legitimised by a documentary, narrated by a clean shaven white man standing in front of a camera in suit and tie.”

WarSri LankaWar CrimeSri Lankan War
Book:A Passage North
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“Ich glaube fest daran, dass jede Generation ihre eigene Aufgabe hat. Die Generation unserer Eltern hatte die Aufgabe die Perle des indischen Ozeans, die wunderschöne Insel Sri Lanka zu verlassen, um sich, und gerade uns, ein Leben in Sicherheit zu schenken. Dafür sollten wir Ihnen unendlich dankbar sein. Und die einzige Möglichkeit die ich sehe, wie wir dies zurückzahlen können, ist jede Chance die uns gegeben wird, zu nutzen, alles aus unserem Leben zu machen.”

GenerationsGenerationSri LankaTamilKulturAufgabeLebensaufgabeTamile
Author:Akilnathan Logeswaran
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“I've noticed that the more flooding there is, the more bullshit gets talked. I mean it was very noticeable in the Asian tsumai. It happened around Christmas-New Year. The Muslims of Sri Lanka said 'We knew this would happen because the Christians were using alcohol for their Christmas celebrations.' The Buddhists said 'We knew this would happen because of the horrible Muslim slaughter practices.' It's amazing to see how apocalypse or catastrophe makes people behave primitively.”

PeopleYearsMeanSaidHappensChristianPracticeHappenedAlcoholHorribleBuddhistBehaveCelebrationNew YearBullshitCatastropheApocalypseAsianSlaughterFloodingSri Lanka
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“The fact that television and tourism have made the whole world accessible has created the illusion that we enjoy intimate knowledge of other places, when we barely scratch their surface. For the vast majority, the knowledge of Thailand or Sri Lanka acquired through tourism consists of little more than the whereabouts of the beach.”

WorldLittlesMadeWholeFactsEnjoyTelevisionIllusionMajoritySurfaceWhole WorldBeachIntimateScratchesTourismThailandSri LankaWhereabouts
Author:Martin Jacques
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“I'd spent thirty years visiting the Dalai Lama, and twenty years as a journalist going to difficult places, war zones and revolutions from North Korea to Haiti and Beirut to Sri Lanka, and the question came up: What does this man have to offer to this world which seems so torn up and so attached to conflict?”

MenWorldYearsDoeWarSeemsDifficultThis WorldRevolutionOffersConflictTwentiesJournalistThirtyZoneTornKoreaNorth KoreaVisitingThirty YearsHaitiLamaDalaiSri LankaWar ZonesBeirut
Author:Pico Iyer
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“There's always a joy in newness as a painter, and in sub-Saharan Africa, I encountered different realities with regard to light and how it bounces across the skin. The way that blues and purples come into play. In India and Sri Lanka, it was no different. It became a moment in which I had an opportunity to learn as a painter how to create the body in full form, and that's a very material and aesthetic thing. This is not conceptual. It's all an abstraction.”

WayDifferentPlayMomentsBodyRealityLightFormJoyOpportunityMaterialsSkinsIndiaRegardPainterAestheticAbstractionBounceNewnessOpportunities To LearnSri LankaDifferent RealitiesSub Saharan Africa
Author:Kehinde Wiley
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“I think East Asian countries, I think they're very fortunate to have Buddhism survive as a strong influence because right from the time when Buddha himself, 2,500 years ago, made the point about the importance of education, and the word "Buddha" also means enlighten[ed] or educated. So all the Buddhist countries, not only Japan and Korea and China and Hong Kong and Thailand but also even Burma and Sri Lanka, had a higher level of education.”

ThinkingYearsMeanMadeCountryStrongLevelsInfluenceBuddhismHigherYears AgoImportanceChinaEastEducatedBuddhistFortunateJapanAsianKoreaEnlighteningHigher LevelHong KongThailandBurmaSri LankaImportance Of EducationAsian Countries
Author:Amartya Sen
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“I make a distinction between Buddhism with a Capital 'B' and buddhism with a small 'b'. Sri Lanka has the former, in which the state uses Buddhism as an instrument of power, so there are even Buddhists monks who say the Tamils should be eliminated. Thai Buddhists are not perfect either. Some Thai Buddhist monks have compromised with the kind and possess cars and other luxuries. In many Buddhist countries, the emphasis is on being goody-goody, which is not good enough. I am for buddhism with a small 'b' which is non-violent, practical and aims to eliminate the cause of suffering.”

ShouldKindCountryStatesEnoughUseSufferingCausesPerfectCarHumilityPrideBuddhismAimInstrumentsBe GoodViolentPracticalsLuxuryBuddhistFormerDistinctionGood EnoughEmphasisMonkNot PerfectNot Good EnoughNon ViolentThaiSri LankaBuddhist Monk
Author:Sulak Sivaraksa
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