Arundhati Roy: Trending quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“Things can change in a day.”

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

“D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

“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..”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

“The American way of life is not sustainable. It doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.”

“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.”