Roma Tearne (née Chrysostom) is a Sri Lankan-born artist and writer. Her first novel, Mosquito, was shortlisted for the 2007 Costa Book Awards first Novel prize (formerly the Whitbread Prize).
Actually what is happening in the twenty-first century, this is the great century of migration, so we have people from all around the globe going all over the place, and they have to integrate into a society, that society that exists has to integrate with them. Both sides have to work at it. It's not a one-way thing.
You can't anticipate history. It's only when you look back you see what the Romans did, and what various other empires did, what the British Empire did. We're now beginning to see the long shadow that it created, so one must be hopeful and say that what's going on in Asia, that what's going on in the Middle East, that all these various areas of conflict, that they will pass and move onto another area. But it would seem that the natural order of things is there is this cyclic behavior of destruction followed by a calm period.
Grey has no agenda. . . . Grey has the ability, that no other colour has, to make the invisible visible.
Remembered memory is much more powerful than actually having your own memory.
Reconciliation is one of the hardest words. We almost forget, but there's always a little group that can't.
This thing, reconciliation, isn't perfect, but we also must have hope. Without hope, there is nothing. So let's hope.
Once you have been tortured, you can never belong in this world. There is no place that ever be your home.
It is important for women to do something about what they see.
We oppress people, we make our victims small wherever they are, whether they are a black girl in a rural community in, say, America or Britain, or whether it's something happening out there in one of the countries of conflict. I mean Sri Lanka, the human rights abuse there is appalling.
Some say art is our highest form of hope. . . . Perhaps it's our only hope.