Quotes from Arundhati Roy

Once you understand the process of corporate globalization, you have to see that what happened in Argentina, the devastation of Argentina by the IMF, is part of the same machine that is destroying Iraq. Both are efforts to break open and to control markets. And so Argentina is destroyed by the chequebook, and Iraq is destroyed by the cruise missile. If the chequebook won't work, the cruise missile will. Hell hath no fury like a market scorned.

Argentina & Iraq have been decimated by the same process with different weapons; an IMF cheque & cruise missiles.

It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life it purloined.

Why should propaganda be the exclusive preserve of the Western media? Just because they do it better?

Vi?a nov?rsa skatienu. Vi?š ar?. Pag?tnes d?moni atgriez?s, lai vi?us sag?st?tu. Lai atkal iet?tu pag?tnes vecaj?, r?tainaj? ?d? un aizvilktu atpaka? uz turieni, kur tie paties?b? mita. Kur M?lest?bas Likumi nosaka, kuru dr?kst m?l?t. Un k?. Un cik stipri.

Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace.

Excitement Always Leads to Tears

Vi?ai izveidoj?s sp?c?ga netaisn?bas izj?ta un ietiep?gs, bezr?p?gs raksturs, k?ds rodas, tad, kad K?du Mazu visu m?žu sp?dzina K?ds Lielais. Vi?a neko nedar?ja, lai izvair?tos no str?diem un konfliktiem. Paties?bu sakot, vi?a tos pat mekl?ja, varb?t vi?ai tie pat patika.

human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things they could get used to.

Oddly, neglect seemed to have resulted in an accidental release of the spirit.

While the Doctor was searching for a more lasting cure, the Saint journeyed across India distributing a placebo.

Like cities. Fizzy, effervescent, simulating the illusion of life while the planet they had plundered died around them.

Ja vi?a grib?tu, lai piepild?s k?da maza v?l?šan?s, t? b?tu- Nezin?t. Nezin?t, ko katra diena vi?ai sniegs. Nezin?t, kur vi?a b?s r?t, n?kamaj? m?nes? vai gad?. P?c desmit gadiem. Nezin?t, k? vi?as ce?š pagriez?sies un kas gaida aiz l?kuma.

Not everybody likes the idea of their cities filling up with the poor. A judge in Bombay called slum dwellers pickpockets of urban land. Another said, while ordering the bulldozing of unauthorized colonies, that people who couldn't afford to live in cities shouldn't live in them. When those who had been evicted went back to where they came from, they found their villages had disappeared under great dams and dusty quarries.

Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It

When the last soldier has gone, the people climb over the debris of the burnt house. The tin sheets that were once the roof are still smouldering. A scorched trunk lies open, flames still leaping out of it. What was in it that burns so beautifully?

they knew that they had to put their faith in fragility. Stick to Smallness. Each time they parted, they extracted only one small promise from each other: Tomorrow?Tomorrow.

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.

He didn't know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough.

Indians who valorize their own struggle for independence from British rule and virtually worship those who led it are for the most part strangely opaque to Kashmiris who are fighting for the same thing.

I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there's lots to write about. That can't be done in Kashmir. It's not sophisticated, what happens here. There's too much blood for good literature.

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

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

All we seem to be left with now is paranoid gibberish about a War on Terror whose whole purpose is to expand the War, increase the Terror, and obfuscate the fact that the wars of today are not aberrations but systemic, logical exercises to preserve a way of life whose delicate pleasures and exquisite comforts can only be delivered to the chosen few by a continuous, protracted war for hegemony--Lifestyle Wars.