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. “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

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

6. “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

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

— 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. “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

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

11. “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

12. “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

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

17. “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

18. “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

19. “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

20. “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

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

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

— 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 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

25. “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

26. “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

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

28. “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

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

31. “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

32. “Magic isn’t evil or good. Or black or white. It is like the universe, like every missing God. Powerful and supremely indifferent.”

— 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. “Typical government office. Take a number and sit down until you forget why you came.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

36. “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

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

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

— Shehan Karunatilaka

40. “In all this madness, there is only one beast whose existence you doubt. And you are not thinking of God, also known as Whoever. You are thinking of that most impossible of all mythical creatures: the Honest Politician.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

41. “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

42. “You should never be with someone who doesn’t laugh at your jokes.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

43. “Nothings is for nothing, putha.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

44. “You are now. And you won’t be soon.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

45. “1983 was an atrocity. eight thousand homes, five thousand shops, a hundred and fifty thousand homeless, no official body count. The Sri Lankan government has neither acknowledged nor apologised for it.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

46. “There are always things to do. Most are pointless.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

47. “Either the monsoons have come early or the universe is shedding tears for you and your silly little life. Today, the tears fall thick as globs of ink, diving from angry clouds onto the heads of the meek.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

48. “Only karma grants what is yours.”

— Shehan Karunatilaka

49. “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

50. “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