Arundhati Roy Quotes

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

“Who can know from the word goodbye what kind of parting is in store for us.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

“At times there's something so precise and mathematically chilling about nationalism.

Build a dam to take away water AWAY from 40 million people. Build a dam to pretend to BRING water to 40 million people. Who are these gods that govern us? Is there no limit to their powers?”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

“Does rough weather choose men over women? Does the sun beat on men, leaving women nice and cool?' Nyawira asked rather sharply. 'Women bear the brunt of poverty. What choices does a woman have in life, especially in times of misery? She can marry or live with a man. She can bear children and bring them up, and be abused by her man. Have you read Buchi Emecheta of Nigeria, Joys of Motherhood? Tsitsi Dangarembga of Zimbabwe, say, Nervous Conditions? Miriama Ba of Senegal, So Long A Letter? Three women from different parts of Africa, giving words to similar thoughts about the condition of women in Africa.'

'I am not much of a reader of fiction,' Kamiti said. 'Especially novels by African women. In India such books are hard to find.'

'Surely even in India there are women writers? Indian women writers?' Nyawira pressed. 'Arundhati Roy, for instance, The God of Small Things? Meena Alexander, Fault Lines? Susie Tharu. Read Women Writing in India. Or her other book, We Were Making History, about women in the struggle!'

'I have sampled the epics of Indian literature,' Kamiti said, trying to redeem himself. 'Mahabharata, Ramayana, and mostly Bhagavad Gita. There are a few others, what they call Purana, Rig-Veda, Upanishads … Not that I read everything, but …'

'I am sure that those epics and Puranas, even the Gita, were all written by men,' Nyawira said. 'The same men who invented the caste system. When will you learn to listen to the voices of women?”
― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Wizard of the Crow

“Any government's condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely argued, non-violent dissent. And yet, what's happening is just the opposite. The world over, non-violent resistance movements are being crushed and broken. If we do not respect and honour them, by default we privilege those who turn to violent means.”
― Arundhati Roy

“Searching for the Man who lives in him was perhaps what he really meant, because certainly no beast has essayed the boundless, infinitely inventive art of human hatred. No beast can match its range and power.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Et tu, Caesar? Then fall, Caesar.
Et tu, Estha? Then fall, Estha.”
― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

“In India we're fighting to retain a wilderness that we have. Whereas in the west, it's gone. Every person that's walking down the street is a walking bar code. You can tell where their clothes are from, how much they cost, which designer made which shoe, which shop you bought each item from. Everything is civilized and tagged and valued and numbered and put in it's place. Whereas in India, the wilderness still exists-the unindoctrinated wilderness of the mind, full of untold secrets and wild imaginings.”
― Arundhati Roy

“Estha carried them home in the crowded train. A quite bubble floating in a sea of noise”
― Arundhati Roy

“Excitement Always Leads to Tears”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“The slow ceiling fan sliced the thick, frightened air into an unending spiral that spun slowly to the floor like the peeled skin of an endless potato.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“It started with the coffee cups  –  which turned out to have been teacups –  being smashed.
‘In all these years you haven’t managed to learn the difer-ence between teacups and cofee cups?’
The insults washed over me like a tide. Apart from the usual ones, the additional theme of course was ‘whore ’ and ‘prostitute ’. It went on for ever, while everybody watched. That was the thing. Everybody watched. We had no home. No privacy. She would calm down and then get incensed and start screaming again, in waves.”
― Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me

“All of them want to be the people in the book. They’d rather be that than themselves. You’ve turned all the monsters into nice people.’
G. Isaac reeled of some of Chacko’s lines from the book, which didn’t help to ameliorate the confusion. The moment that is immortalized in my mind is G. Isaac in my mother’s school sports ground, airily quoting Chacko airily quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald with absolutely no context, to my completely bewildered British publisher and literary agent.
‘You know Gatsby turned out all right in the end. It is what preyed on him, the foul dust that foated in the wake of his dreams . . .’
When he didn’t manage to initiate an interesting conversation with them, G.  Isaac made his plump, cheerful way into the audience and sat in one of the middle rows. Mrs Roy was already onstage, deep in conversation with Kamala Das, and had still not noticed him.”
― Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me

“I was travelling with Sanjay who was shooting a new documen-tary. He shushed me. His father was a retired Indian army ofcer. In Sanjay’s family those words would have been nothing short of blasphemous. They were Kashmiri Pandits (Brahmins) –  the tiny, privileged Hindu minority, almost all of whom had fed the valley when the Pakistan- backed, overtly Islamist insurrection began. As
ARUNDHATI ROY
a community, during the uneasy years since Partition in 1947, and the frst public demands by the Muslim majority in the Kashmir Valley for the right to self- determination, most Kashmiri Pandits had aligned themselves with the Indian state. This became more true, steadfastly, bitterly so, after more than two hundred Kashmiri
Pandits were killed by militants in the early years of the insurrection, triggering the exodus of the whole traumatized community from the Kashmir Valley.”
― Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me

“the actor decided to land the knock out punch: ‘When she was born, her birth certifcate was an apology from God.’
Imagine his joy had he known that my own mother might have agreed with him. Imagine his sorrow had he known that I
MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME
had the equivalent of navy SEAL training on this subject and that his exertions didn’t move my needle even a micromillimetre. • Mrs Roy had often told me about how miserable she was when she learned that she was pregnant with a second child. Me. She described how lonely life with Micky was on the tea estate in Assam. How she would stand for hours on the veranda of their house watching wild rhinos grazing in the grassland just beyond the fence, feeling nauseated and apprehensive about the life she had chosen. Her first baby was only nine months old, and she already had another coming.”
― Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me