Arundhati Roy citations

Page 2

“Il est capable de mettre au jour la douleur qui est au coeur du bonheur. (p.305)”

“Besoin inconscient chez l'homme de détruire ce qu'il ne peut ni soumettre ni adorer. (p.401)”

“L'enfance n'avait laissé sur eux aucune trace. Dépourvus de curiosité comme de doutes, ils étaient à leur manière terriblement adultes. (p.344)”

“Quand elles en eurent assez d'avoir attendu, les odeurs du dîner descendirent des rideaux et s'échappèrent par les fenêtres de l'hôtel pour aller danser sur la mer jusqu'au petit matin.”

“Quand par hasard elle changeait de chaîne, toutes ces famines, ces épidémies, ces guerres télévisuelles l'affolaient. (…) Elle considérait famines, génocides et purifications ethniques comme autant de phénomènes susceptibles de mettre son mobilier en péril.”

“La maladie, ce n’est pas le terrorisme, c’est l’extrême injustice”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”