Arundhati Roy Quotes

“Who can know from the word goodbye what kind of parting is in store for us.”

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.”

“Our dreams have been doctored. We belong no where. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter..”

“There is only one dream worth having…to live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead.”

“If he touched her, he couldn't talk to her, if he loved her he couldn't leave, if he spoke he couldn't listen, if he fought he couldn't win.”

“She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for [him] was actually a tentative, timorous, acceptance of herself.”

“One beach-colored.
One brown.
One Loved.
One Loved a Little Less.”

“When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

“He held her as though she was a gift. Given to him in love. Something still and small. Unbearably precious.”

“Ammu loved her children (of course), but their wide-eyed vulnerability and their willingness to love people who didn't really love them exasperated her and sometimes made her want to hurt them-- just as an education, a precaution.”

“With the certitude of a true believer, Vellya Paapen had assured the twins that there was no such thing in the world as a black cat. He said that there were only black cat chaped holes in the universe.”

“Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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…”

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

“Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“Some things come with their own punishments.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.”

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

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

“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?”

“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.”

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

“Humans are animals of habit.”

“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.”

“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?”

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

“… 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. …”

“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.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”