“To come to England in the 1970s was to return to this strange other-wo...” — Romesh Gunesekera Quote

To come to England in the 1970s was to return to this strange other-world of half-known history. I found the imperial architecture curiously familiar: the post office, the town hall, the botanic gardens.

For me, there is urgency in fiction, even though writing is, in itself, an act against the corrosiveness of time.

The old idea that you grow wiser as you get older, and you learn from your elders, is actually completely wrong.

Sri Lanka is a part of my background: it's not where I live, but it's what I want to explore. And I find it works very well to explore through fiction.

There is a profound ethic to architecture which is different from the other arts.

Frank Lloyd Wright made houses right up until the end. I think that's important because it gives you a direct connection to all the basic aspects of architecture - the spatial energy of the place, the construction, the materials, the site, the detail.

If I failed in acting, I wanted to have a backup, thus I chose architecture. I learnt painting as well.

I love food, and my girlfriend comes from an architecture background, so we might open up a restaurant.

One of the dilemmas of architecture in general is that there is a Catch-22 - you can't actually get to be commissioned to do certain types of building until you've already built that type of building. So it seems to be incredibly hard to get going.