CONTENTS
OF THIS SECTION
Last updated
04/09/08

"I desire that I write for myself alone. It is when that which is buried in me finds expression in words, that I myself come to truly know what was buried in me. It may well be that the reason that I write is because I feel that I may discover more and more and come to know what else may be inside me. As I continue to write, and as more and more experiences unfold from within me, and as I become subject to these experiences, it seems to me that I may, in a way, make it possible for me to know who I am.  

There are those who find that the words that I write to understand about myself, also help them to understand themselves. They are my readers. When they hear that the key that I fashioned for my lock, may also open their locks, they come in search of my house. When they come, it appears to me that it is entirely appropriate that I should share my understanding... 

So that a writer may protect this nature, this way of  life, I value freedom of expression as the most important freedom. I cannot say that at the present time I have sufficient courage or awareness of truth to practice that which I have so easily described. These are qualities that I will need to develop. I believe that it will be possible for me to do so..." Sundara Ramasamy (translation by Nadesan Satyendra from the Tamil original)

"It is true that writing is mostly a way to be a good companion to one’s self. It is true that writing is a way to live your life over several times. It is true that if you write only to get the attention of others, you will never be satisfied. Because you can’t ever really know what others think. This is especially the case with friends and family and neighbours. The closer people are to you, the less they will have to say about what you publish. It’s the people you do not know – the readers from far away - ones you will never meet – who will write to you and reflect on your writing. In part it is because they have imagined you. You are a projection of their lives and thinking. Fan mail is more about the fan than you."  Robert Fulghum

"Only connect!...Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die." E.M.Forster - Howards End

"...The desire to share knowing with another human being is a fundamental one. It is at heart a desire to make your thoughts known to the other and to learn whether they are understood, even shared - always with the chance that I will mean more than I meant before, because of the way the other has understood what I have said. The process is one that truly works from both the inside out and the outside in, as we each become different persons through our interaction with one another..." - Deanne Kuhn, Professor of Psychology and Education, Columbia University in *Piaget Vygotsky & Beyond: Future Issues for Developmental Psychology and Education, 1997

"The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth... Then you will naturally ask me why I go the world over, continually speaking. I will tell you for what reason I do this... As an artist paints a picture because he takes delight in that painting, because it is his self-expression, his glory, his well being, so I do this not because I want anything from anyone... Jiddu Krishnamurthy 1929

"...I may be asked whether I am a prince or a legislator that I should be writing about politics. I answer no: and indeed that that is my reason for doing so. If I were a prince or a legislator I should not waste my time saying what ought to be done; I should do it or keep silent...the very right to vote imposes on me the duty to instruct myself in public affairs, however little influence my voice may have in them... Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they..." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract,1762

"...the moment I feel that my freedom is indissolubly linked with that of all other men, it cannot be demanded of me that I use it to approve the enslavement of a part of these men. Thus, whether he is an essayist, a pamphleteer, a satirist, or a novelist, whether he speaks only of individual passions or whether he attacks the social order, the writer, a free man addressing free men, has only one subject - freedom...

...One does not write for slaves. The art of prose is bound up with the only regime in which prose has meaning, democracy. When one is threatened, the other is too. And it is not enough to defend them with the pen. A day comes when the pen is forced to stop, and the writer must then take up arms. Thus, however you might have come to it, whatever the opinions you might have professed, literature throws you into battle. Writing is a certain way of wanting freedom; once you have begun, you are committed, willy-nilly." Jean-Paul Sartre, in What is Literature, 1948

"...A writer writes to a great extent to be read - as for those who say they don’t, let us admire them but not believe them.." Albert Camus

Selected Speeches & Writings

Nadesan Satyendra - நடேசன் சத்தியேந்திரா

What is a nation?, 1997

Child Soldiers and the Law  2004

Some Reflections on 'Sri Lanka: Reign of Anomy' , 2008