Quotes from Arundhati Roy

NOTHING 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. Q 1: Why is it not sophisticated? Q 2: What is the acceptable amount of blood for good literature?

The practice of untouchability, cruel as it was- the broom tied to the waist, the pot hung around the neck- was the performative, ritualistic end of the practice of caste. The real violence of the caste was the denial of entitlement: to land, to wealth, to knowledge, to equal opportunity.

Now we're in a situation where democracy has been taken into the workshop and fixed, remodelled to be market friendly. So now the United States is fighting wars to install democracies. First is was topple them, now it's install them. And the whole rise of corporate-funded NGOs in the modern world, this notion of CSR, corporate social responsibility--it's all part of a New Managed Democracy. In a sense, it's all part of the same machine.

In order to detach caste from the political economy, from conditions of enslavement in which most dalits lived and worked, in order to slide the questions of entitlement, land reforms and the redistribution of wealth, Hindu reformers cleverly narrowed the question of caste to the issue of untouchability. They framed it as an erroneous religious and cultural practice that needed to be reformed.

Nas Grandes Histórias você sabem quem vive, quem morre, quem encontra o amor, quem não encontra. E, mesmo assim, você quer ouvir de novo.

The Believers come with their guns, their prayer beads and their own Destroy-Yourselves Manual.

Terrorism is vicious, ugly, and dehumanizing for its perpetrators as well as its victims. But so is war. You could says that terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketeers of war. They are people who don't believe that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

For the first time in her life, Tilo felt that her body had enough room to accomodate all of its organs.

India asks us, 'Why do you throw stones?' No one asks, 'Who burned your house down?

In moments of crisis it helps to take the long view.

India lives in several centuries at the same time.

Some things come with their own punishments. Like bedrooms with built-in cupboards. They would all learn more about punishments soon. That they came in different sizes. That some were so big they were like cupboards with built-in bedrooms.

Our lungs are gradually being depleted of oxygen. Perhaps it's time to use whatever breath remains in our bodies to say: Open the bloody gates.

The tired wisdom of knowing that what goes around eventually comes around.

The frozen flowers never go away. They hang around somewhere all the time.

Questions signified a vulgar display of ignorance.

His rejection of her in life (gentle and compassionate though it was) was neutralized by death. In her memory of him, he embraced her. Just her. In the way a man embraces a woman.

Now they were old. Old enough. A viable, die-able age.

Across the world, when governments and the media lavish all their time, attention, funds, research, space, sophistication, and seriousness on war talk and terrorism, then the message that goes out is disturbing and dangerous: If you seek to air and redress a public grievance, violence is more effective than non-violence. Unfortunately, if peaceful change is not given a chance, then violent change becomes inevitable.

A new world is not only possible

It had to do with the way she lived, in the country of her own skin. A country that issued no visas and seemed to have no consulates.

Capitalism's real "gravediggers" may end up being its own delusional cardinals, who have turned ideology into faith. Despite their strategic brilliance, they seem to have trouble grasping a simple fact: Capitalism is destroying the planet. The two old tricks that dug it out of past crises—War and Shopping—simply will not work.

He had seen her through so much; he believed that if not he, then certainly music, would see her through this too.

Once you have fallen off the edge like all of us have, you will never stop falling. And as you fall you will hold on to other falling people. The sooner you understand that the better. This place where we live, where we made our home, is the place of falling people. Here there is baqeeqat. Arre, even we aren't real. We don't really exist