Arundhati Roy Quotes
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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.
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'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.'
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Ammu had an elaborate Calcutta wedding. Later, looking back on the day, Ammu realized that the slightest feverish glitter in her bridegroom's eyes had not been love, or even excitement at the prospect of carnal bliss, but approximately eight large pegs of whiskey. Straight. Neat.
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They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.
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While, legally and constitutionally, speech may be free, the space in which that freedom can be exercised has been snatched from us and auctioned to the highest bidders.
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Kochu Maria watched with her cake-crumbs.The Fond Smiles watched Fondly.Little Girls Playing.Sweet.One beach-coloured.One brown.One Loved.One Loved a Little Less.
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Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
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Modern democracies have been around long enough for neoliberal capitalists to learn how to subvert them. They have mastered the technique of infiltrating the instruments of democracy—the 'independent' judiciary, the 'free' press, the parliament—and moulding them to their purpose.
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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.
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Thirty-one.Not old.Not young.But a viable die-able age.
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'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.'
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Her own grief grieved her. His devastated her. (On Sophie Mol's death, describing Mamachi's grief, and Chacko's).
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The story of the tragic decline of an Indian family whose members suffer the terrible consequences of forbidden love, The God of Small Things is set in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India.
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Ammu explained to Estha and Rahel that people always loved best what they Identified most with.
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There is only one dream worth having...to live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead.
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Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.
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The story of the Narmada valley is nothing less than the story of Modern India. Like the tiger in the Belgrade zoo during the NATO bombing, we've begun to eat our own limbs.
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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.
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Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or think they have) gained.
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She wondered what had caused the bald pilgrims to vomit so uniformly, and whether they had vomited together in a single, well-orchestrated heave (to music perhaps, to the rhythm of a bus bhajan), or separately, one at a time.
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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.
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In those early amorphous years of life, when memory had only just begun, when life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and everything was Forever
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Humbling was a nice word, Rahel thought. Humbling along without a care in the world.
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He watched her. He took his time.Had he known that he was about to enter a tunnel whose only egress was his own annihilation, would he have turned away?Perhaps.Perhaps not.Who can tell?