Noontide Toll Quotes

“I carry more than dreams. There is so much in my head I wonder how I will ever get it out. How do I do it before it is too late? Before I forget what has happened, what I saw, what I thought, what I believed on all those journeys north and south. The hopes, the aspirations, the secret guilt embedded in our shaken lives. Before I give up on the stories that make us who we are and drift with the tide into oblivion like very other sleepy grey head in the world.”
― Romesh Gunesekera, Noontide Toll

“So much is kept off limits these days. There are things we don't speak of, things we not only don't remember but carefully forget, places we do not stray into, memories we bury or reshape. That is the way we all live nowadays: driving a long a road between hallucination and amnesia. As long as you are moving, you are OK -- you have negotiated safe passage, for the moment. It is only when you come to a stop like this, in a black night in the middle of nowhere, that things wobble a bit and you wonder about the purpose of roads. You sit in the dark, frightened at the life you've led and things you've led undone. You can only hope that in the long run it won't matter, but that in itself is no consolation at all.”
― Romesh Gunesekera, Noontide Toll: Stories

“I like to know about the world beyond our shores. About faraway countries where people behave differently. I like to hear about their food and customs. How they deal with the cold and the rain. What it is like to drive on the other side of the road.”
― Romesh Gunesekera, Noontide Toll: Stories

“The time when it seemed friends became enemies and enemies became friends. But then that's perhaps the way it is, always. Nobody knows who is really who and what they have done and what they might be about to do.”
― Romesh Gunesekera, Noontide Toll