Noah

“Kneeling on the moss-grown bank of the burn that flowed past the croft she leaned forward with cupped hand to drink, and felt, leaning forward, as if tender arms enfolded her and drew her gently to a bosom of rest; and in a moment she passed deeper and deeper into this embrace for ever and ever, like her grandmother, who died happily and left one mattress to her grand-daughter; deeper and deeper, and she saw her reflection washed away in the flow of the stream, and the earth floated off with her into space like the angel that glides away with us when we die, and once more the good autumnal scent of the earth filled her senses, and finally the earth laid its cheek to hers like a mother, while the waters of the world rippled on in her ears, telling of their love; then there was nothing more.”
― Halldór Laxness

“The twins were too young to know that these were only history’s henchmen. Sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws. Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear—civilization’s fear of nature, men’s fear of women, power’s fear of powerlessness. Man’s subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunged out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. They way she used Kipling to love her children before putting them to bed: We be of one blood, though and I. Her goodnight kiss. The way she held their faces steady with one hand (squashed-cheeked, fish-mouthed) while she parted and combed their hair with the other. The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied.

She was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“The official nomenclature of prejudice is a maze
that can make everything read like a bigoted bureaucrat’s file notings.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Doctor and the Saint: The Ambedkar - Gandhi Debate