Ama H. Vanniarachchy

“I fear the many faces, many personalities in me. Sometimes I fail to understand my self and become deceived by my various selves.”

“I love the smell of pastels...that breaths life into my soul.”

“Humanity need not be taught in schools, it is a gift and skill one should master.”

“A writer is someone who analyses the society, people and the world around him or her. Simply a writer is someone who pays attention to the utmost simple things happening around him or her. I believe the best things about being a writer is, you are going to live forever through your work, in your books, in the hearts of your readers, in your characters.”

“Some love stories has no end, no path or no name, but they are 'love stories' too.”

“I love to see the sunshine on the wings of the Dragonflies... there is magic in it.”

“If humans are kind to each other, if really humanity do exist, the world would have been a better place and we wouldn’t need to fight so much for innocent lives. This would have made our struggles easier. As I get involved more and more in protecting innocent lives my faith in Humanity fades away. What a world we live in? Can we have faith in humanity? We humans are here to protect others, but we are the very reason that their lives are in danger. How long can we fight for the week, for the voiceless? The future is so dark!!!”

“I believe in magic. Writing is my magic wand, and through my magic I create my own secret world, away from all these worries and responsibilities. Love, honesty and humanity is essential to enter this beautiful world of magic. I dwell among White magical peacocks, glowing unicorns, fire breathing turquoise dragons, talking trees, flying horses, talking wise jackals and wolves, crystal water falls, secret pathways hidden in urban gardens and books with doorways to secret worlds. You need to believe in magic to experience it.”

“Every living thing is sacred to me. Compassion and love can heal this world, which is set on fire of violence and hatred. I will teach the world about compassion, and end the suffering by halting these floods of sorrow. Said Prince Siddhartha and began his journey of saving the man kind.” ,”

“Everybody put on masks, including you and me. We all wear masks.”

“I believe almost every author have gone through the terribly uncomfortable period between the time of shedding the seeds of a story and waiting to see it flourish as a published book, spending hours watering and fertilizing it. This is a dreadful period, frustrating and depressing.”

“Words are my weapons. They might kill or cure the readers, that’s out of my control.”

“Writers should be heard, not seen.”

“Magic is seeing wonder in nature's every little thing, seeing how wonderful the fireflies are and how magical are the dragonflies.”

“A dark night, lightened up by thousands of glowing fireflies... It's magical...”

“Humanity is not only ‘great acts’ spending thousands, putting your name on headlines. Humanity is to be kind to every living being, to be compassionate towards all, even to the tiniest animal, seen and unseen. Some people consider killing ants or pest normal, but I find it is an act of extreme cruelty. By killing them you violate their rights to live. We must remember that the earth and the universe belongs to all of us. We are just another species out of millions of species, and we share the universe with them and most importantly, remember that we belong to each other.”

“I was lost in a magical mystic world as I step into the old university library. This place I would say is the birth place of the ‘writer’ in me and still one of my most loved places in the world. It was always peaceful there. Each and every moment I spent their searching for books or walking on unknown paths with the un-quenching thirst for knowledge, is cherished in my mind forever. The dark dusty corners all brown and the smell of old books untouched by readers for years, the quiet long walking passages between overloaded bookshelves were places where my magical world existed.”

“Being a famous writer is great. But there is a limit for it. For what extend can you be famous, and what would you achieve? True, your books will be best sellers, your blog writings and tweets will be hits, fans will love you, and what next? We all die to reach ‘there’ as budding writers, but once we reach ‘it’, we think, what next? Is this what we wanted all our lives? To grab all the leading awards, write best sellers, to be loved, to be known and heard? Will they help us achieve inner peace? I believe the utmost important thing is achieving inner peace, not money and fame. A writer should write to achieve inner peace forgetting all other things. Money, fame, fans are not going to last forever, but inner peace is.”

“I do not trust people who do not wear a wrist watch.”

“I was asked, ‘When is the next book release, it’s been over a year since the last book release, have you given up writing?” Again a senseless question by a Sri Lankan journalist. Does it mean that being a writer means you have to release a book every month? Do they count a writer’s success by the quantity of books or the quality of the work? I am concerned about the quality of work, not the quantity of books that I release. One can publish hundreds of books within a couple of years today as technology is advance and cheap, but keeping the quality of the work is something you cannot depend of technology and money. It is the quality of thinking of the writer which should reflect through their work. I have been in the field for almost 2 and a half years, learnt a lot through trial and error, learn through my mistakes. I am no longer bothered about the number of books I write, how much I spend or how much I earn, my only focus is to do something quality which will last long, even after I am gone, something that will touch the soul of the readers. Will these journalists understand a soul of an artist? In this big dirty game of ‘media mafia’, ‘artists’ are only marketing ideas.”