Island of a Thousand Mirrors Quotes

“When a bone breaks, it heals stronger in the cracks. I realize this is what is happening to her heart.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“It is only in absence that the true weight of love is felt.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“She talks in her most sedate voice, attempting to alleviate out fears, soothe our anxiety. She knows that if we are to survive watching this war from a distance, as spectators, we do not have the privilege of indignation or anxiety.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“Farther out beyond the reef, where the coral gives way to the true deep, at a certain time of day a tribe of flat silver fish gather in their thousands. To be there is to be surrounded by living shards of light. At a secret signal, all is chaos, a thousand mirrors shattering about him. Then the school speeds to sea and the boy is left in sedate water, a tug and pull of the body as comfortable as sitting in his father’s outspread sarong being sung to sleep.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“There is silence and then the familiar smack of Beatrice Muriel’s palm against her forehead. “A love marriage,” she says. In her opinion, love marriages border on the indecent. They signify a breakdown of propriety, a giving in to the base instincts exhibited by the lower castes and foreigners.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“Those less fortunate eat dried fish while the truly destitute fight with the spiny shells of crabs or lobsters. Decades later, my father will find it incomprehensible that Americans crave what in his childhood was considered repugnant fare.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“Sometimes when I am by myself I miss the taste of our well. Water filtered through our small piece of earth, its exact mineral consistency, the taste of home. It is the only thing I allow myself to remember.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“In these myriad ways, we carved out our lives in Los Angeles. Yet falling asleep was often an act of travel, taking me quickly by the hand so that I am instantly surrounded by verdant foliage, the ocean's emerald roar, the voices of Alice, Mala, our grandmother. Those most familiar and beloved of women.

But there are also nightmares. Over and over I dream of a small house, a glittering lagoon, a mango tree, and a young girl. She stands before me and her large bruised eyes do not leave mine. When she unpins the sari fold at her shoulder and pulls it away from her, I see sunset-colored bruises on her delicate clavicles. When she undoes her sari blouse, I see the grenades tucked like extra breasts under her own. It is grotesque. I wake trembling, and her eyes stays with me for hours.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“We have learned not to care about the state of that other place even as it burns or drowns.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“Three years after my birth, my mother swells again. When Lanka is born and brought home, Shiva and I gaze over the edge of the bassinet at this strange, alien creature and claim her as our own. We are a threesome from then on. Joined at the hip. A pyramid. A triangle.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“The sway in Mala’s waist, the curve of her hip beneath the folds of her sari, have caught the eye of many young men, each of whom is secretly willing to denounce the colonial prejudice of skin color by falling in love with her.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“This is the beginning of what we will come to call the Upstairs-Downstairs, Linga-Singha wars.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“I lie, rigid, while they fall asleep around me. My hands clutched into fists, the nails ripping into my flesh so that the pain keeps me from falling back into that pit of men.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“They ask me questions about America, is it true that everyone has a car there? And also, does everyone really have a gun to shoot everyone else on the street?”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“There is a certain new ferocity in her eyes now. A certain new thing that was not there before. I recognize it as scar tissue. When a bone breaks, it heals stronger in the cracks. I realize this is what is happening to her heart.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“We play hide-and-seek, wade into her ponds to fill jam jars with writhing tadpoles, and cavort with her pack of dogs, named Brandy, Whiskey, Lager, so that just calling the pack makes one feel light-headed and drunk.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“The campus spreads around him like the verdant pleasure garden of an ancient king. He is enraptured by the enormous trees that lift branches like cathedral roofs overhead, shoot roots like polished ballroom floors underfoot. In the hot afternoons he leaves the crowded rooms to study under the protection of these spreading giants.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“but I love the long columns of numbers, the need to proceed logically and patiently as the numbers lead you to the final and inevitable answer. It reminds me of dancing. The way my shoulders, the tilt of my arms, and angle of my knees must stay within precise formations, yet also lead where I take them. A sort of freedom that can be attained only within strict rules.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors

“She’s Tamil. That’s enough. They take our land, our jobs. If we let them they will take the whole country.”
― Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors