Arundhati Roy Quotes (122 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

From a speech entitled Confronting Empire http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=2919 given at the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre, 28 January 2003 Speeches Variant: Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. Source: War Talk

“When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men. They were already familiar with the smell. Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“NGOs have a complicated space in neoliberal politics. They are supposed to mop up the anger. Even when they are doing good work, they are supposed to maintain the status quo. They are the missionaries of the corporate world.”

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy: Trending quotes

“Things can change in a day.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”

Arundhati Roy

From a speech entitled Come September http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf, given at the Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, NM, 29 Sep 2002. Speeches Source: War Talk

“The moment I saw her, a part of me walked out of my body and wrapped itself around her. And there it still remains.”

Arundhati Roy book The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Source: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Arundhati Roy Quotes

“I think that I was quite a grown-up child, and I have been a pretty childish adult.”

Arundhati Roy

“You have come to a stage where you almost have to work on yourself. You know, on finding some tranquility with which to respond to these things, because I realize that the biggest risk that many of us run is beginning to get inured to the horrors.”

Arundhati Roy

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims…”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.”

Arundhati Roy

“There is a war that makes us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Some things come with their own punishments.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these:
a) Anything can happen to anyone.
and
b) It is best to be prepared.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.”

Arundhati Roy

“It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that is purloined.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Her own grief grieved her. His devastated her.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

On Sophie Mol's death, describing Mamachi's grief, and Chacko's
Source: The God of Small Things (1997)

“There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.”

Arundhati Roy

“Smells, like music, hold memories. She breathed deep, and bottled it up for posterity.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable.”

Arundhati Roy

“Ammu explained to Estha and Rahel that people always loved best what they Identified most with.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

page 98
Source: The God of Small Things (1997)

“They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things (1997)

“He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn't kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn't see her. If he saw her, he couldn't feel her.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Pointed in the wrong direction, trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps because their footprints had been swept away.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“What came for them? Not death. Just the end of living.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“When she looked at him now, she couldn't help thinking that the man he had become bore so little resemblance to the boy he had been. His smile was the only piece of baggage he had carried with him from boyhood into manhood.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds & then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.”

Arundhati Roy

“I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.”

Arundhati Roy

“It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas, we are being asked to believe that the U. S. marines are actually on a feminist mission.”

Arundhati Roy

Source: Come September

“Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.”

Arundhati Roy

“Must we behave like some damn godforsaken tribe that's just been discovered?”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“I really worry about these political people that have no personal life. If there's nothing that's lovely, and if there's nothing that's just ephemeral, that you can just lie on the floor and bust a gut laughing at, then what's the point?”

Arundhati Roy

“Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-colored puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-colored minds.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Madness slunk in through a chink in History. It only took a moment.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Humans are animals of habit.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“It is true that success is the most boring thing, it is tinny and brittle, failure runs deeper. Success is dangerous. I have a very complicated relationship with that word.”

Arundhati Roy

“He walked on water. Perhaps. But could he have *swum* on land? In matching knickers and dark glasses? With his Fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo? In pointy shoes and a puff? Would he have had the imagination?”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Enemies can't break your spirit, only friends can.”

Arundhati Roy book The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Source: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“… To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget. …”

Arundhati Roy

From the book "The cost of living".
Speeches

“These horrific murders are only a symptom of a deeper malaise. Life is hell for the living too. Whole populations — millions of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and Christians — are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the assault will come.”

Arundhati Roy

Quoted in Was Arundhati Roy really misquoted by Pakistans... https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/was-arundhati-roy-really-misquoted-by-paks-un-rep-or-is-this-leftist-spin

“The tradition of "turkey pardoning" in the US is a wonderful allegory for new racism. Every year, the National Turkey Federation presents the US president with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every year, in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the president spares that particular bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon, the Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its natural life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company that has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds to be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the press.

That's how new racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred turkeys - the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell, or Condoleezza Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself) - are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park.
The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut, and die of AIDS. Basically, they're for the pot. But the fortunate fowls in Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and the World Trade Organisation - so who can accuse those organisations of being anti-turkey? Some serve as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee - so who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say the poor are anti-corporate globalisation? There's a stampede to get into Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way?”

Arundhati Roy

From a speech http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/569/569p12.htm given at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, 16 January 2004 Speeches

“The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.”

Arundhati Roy

Source: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2005), p. 86

“If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man's challenge to God. It's worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created. If you're not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is 4 600 000 000 years old. It could end in an afternoon.”

Arundhati Roy

The End of Imagination August, 1998 http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1516/15160040.htm. Articles