From the nightstand (Anil's Ghost; Michael Ondaatje):

'You like to remain cloudy, don't you, Sarath, even to yourself?' 

'I don't think clarity is necessarily truth. It's simplicity, isn't it?' 

'I need to know what you think. I need to break things apart to know where someone came from. That's also an acceptance of complexity. Secrets turn powerless in open air.' 

'Political secrets are not powerless, in any form,' he said. 

'But the tension and danger around them, one can make them evaporate. You're an archaeologist. Truth comes finally into the light. It's in the bones and sediment.' 

'It's in the character and nuance and mood.' 

'That is what governs us in our lives, that's not truth.' 

'For the living it is the truth,' he quietly said. 

'Why did you get into such business?' 

'I love history, the intimacy of entering all those landscapes. Like entering a dream. Someone nudges a stone away and there's a story.' 

'A secret.' 

'Yes, a secret....'