Top 60 Shehan Karunatilaka Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Sports can unite worlds, tear down walls and transcend race, the past, and all probability. Unlike life, sport matters.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

2. “Father, forgive them, for I will never.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

3. “Do you know why deluded men crave virgins?’ You repeat one of DD’s stupid theories and rush to the punchline. ‘Because a virgin can’t know how bad in the bed you are.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

4. “There is little point to anything. In a thousand years, grass will have grown over all our cities. Nothing of anything will matter.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

5. “I know now that doors open as quickly as they close. That nothing very good or very bad lasts for very long.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

6. “Throughout my life, even when times were tough, I never stopped buying books. Or, come to think of it, booze. My library is dusty and well stocked. My liver is well worn.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

7. “I have no idea what the song is about, but at least it does not sound like furniture falling down stairs.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

8. “Because, on reflection, once you have seen your own face and recognized the color of your eyes, tasted the air and smelled the soil, drunk from the purest fountains and the dirtiest wells, that is the kindest thing you can say abut life. It’s not nothing.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

9. “All stories are recycled and all stories are unfair. Many get luck, and many get misery. Many are born to homes with books, many grow up in the swamps of war. In the end, all becomes dust. All stories conclude with a fade to black.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

10. “Do not be afraid of demons; it is the living we should fear. Human horrors trump anything that Hollywood or the afterlife can conjure. Always remember this when you encounter a wild animal or a stray spirit. They are not as dangerous as you.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

11. “We must all find pointless causes to live for, or why bother with breath?”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

12. “Thank god there is no god. Because to believe in him would be to acknowledge he doesn’t like me much.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

13. “Mirrors lie as much as memories do.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

14. “You know why the battle of good vs evil is so one-sided, Malin? Because evil is better organised, better equipped and better paid. It is not monsters or yakas or demons we should fear. Organised collectives of evil doers who think they are performing the work of the righteous. That is what should make us shudder.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

15. “You are not the you that you think you are. You are everything you have thought and done and been and seen.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

16. “Why should a Creator watch over you? Wasn’t creating you enough?”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

17. “History is people with ships and weapons wiping out those who forgot to invent them. Every civilisation begins with a genocide. It is the rule of the universe. The immutable law of the jungle, even this one made of concrete. You can see it in the movement of the stars, and in the dance of every atom. The rich will enslave the penniless. The strong will crush the weak.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

18. “How else to explain the world’s madness? If there’s a heavenly father, he must be like your father: absent, lazy and possibly evil. For atheists there are only moral choices. Accept that we are alone and strive to create heaven on earth. Or accept that no one’s watching and do whatever the hell you like. The latter is by far easier.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

19. “Despair always begins as a snack that you nibble on when bored and then becomes a meal that you have thrice a day.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

20. “If suicide bombers knew they end up in the same waiting room with all their victims,’ says the ghoul in her slithery voice, ’they may think twice.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

21. “Even on the sad days, when you have to process young children or those leaving lovers behind, you come to realise that every death is significant, even when every life appears not to be.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

22. “Activists, like politicians, are skilled in the art of dodging accusations.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

23. “Evil is not what we should fear. Creatures with power acting in their own interest: that is what should make us shudder.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

24. “The sweetest thing about oblivion is it cannot be felt.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

25. “Is there life after death? What’s it like?”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

26. “Many people have promised the world over bottles and delivered little more than nothing. I am one of them, and they are one of you.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

27. “The universe is all mathematics and probabilities.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

28. “Good sits in a corner, collects a cheque, and pays a mortgage. Evil builds empires.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

29. “People have always suffered,’ said DD. ‘You can legislate against it, reduce it at a macro level. But you will never eliminate it. The best you hope for is that bad stuff doesn’t happen to anyone you know.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

30. “The moon is always up there, even when you can’t see it. You think it stops circling the earth, just because your breath stops?”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

31. “She ranted about how evil doesn’t know it is evil, like the mad don’t know they’re insane. That America doesn’t think it has invaded too many democracies and killed too many innocents. That we shouldn’t let them slaughter like the worst tyrants and drop bombs on children. That there’s nothing exceptional about a country built on genocide and the backs of slaves.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

32. “A mammal with scales, with the tail of a monkey, the claws of a bear and the snout of an anteater. Part dinosaur, part house cat. If we must have an animal as a national symbol, why not a pangolin, something original that we can own.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

33. “How much love does one need in a lifetime? Is there a quantity of brain space that is allocated to love? And for those of us who have loved less, does this space become occupied by something else? Like cricket, or religion, perhaps.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

34. “Only karma grants what is yours.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

35. “Most of Colombo’s socialists don’t love the poor. They just hate the rich.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

36. “Thousands of unseen hands direct the course of every life. And those being directed call it God or karma or dumb luck or other less than accurate names.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

37. “Humans believe they make their own thoughts and possess their own will. This is yet another placebo that we swallow after birth. Thoughts are whispers that come from without as well as within. They can no more be controlled than the wind. Whispers will blow across your mind at all times and you will succumb to more of them than you think.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

38. “Though, as every gambler knows, the biggest killer in this godless universe is the random roll of the dice. Plain stinking jungle variety bad luck. The thing that gets us all.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

39. “Sir Arthur has spent three decades of his life on these haunted shores and is clearly a Sri Lankan. Austria convinced the world that Hitler was German and Mozart was theirs. Surely, after centuries of armed plunder, courtesy of the sea pirates from London, Amsterdam and Lisbon, may we Lankans at least help ourselves to one sci-fi visionary?”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

40. “All stories are recycled and all stories are unfair.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

41. “History is people with ships and weapons wiping out those who forgot to invent them. Every civilisation begins with a genocide. It is the rule of the universe.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

42. “Nothing is forgotten. We just don’t remember where we put it.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

43. “Even suicide requires perseverance.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

44. “It is just meat, hamu. The beautiful part of you is still here.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

45. “To find the “Whoever” behind it all. First find the “whoever” between your ears.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

46. “She also spies a teddybear that your dada brought back from Colombo along with a sexually transmitted disease, which was his parting gift to your Amma. The disease was called despair.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

47. “There are good reasons humans can’t converse with animals, except after death. Because animals wouldn’t stop complaining. And that would make them harder to slaughter.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

48. “You wake up with the answer to the question that everyone asks. The answer is Yes, and the answer is Just Like Here But Worse. That’s all the insight you’ll ever get. So you might as well go back to sleep.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

49. “For atheists there are only moral choices.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

50. “I’ve watched your kind. Both as beast and as ghost. I can’t understand why humans destroy when they can create. Such a waste.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka