Quotes from Arundhati Roy

Achoo, Jose, Yako, Anian, Elayan, Kuttan, Vijayan, Vawa, Joy, Sumathi, Ammal, Annamma, Kanakamma, Latha, Sushila, Vi-jayamma, Jollykutty, Mollykutty, Lucykutty, Beena Mol (girls with bus names).

The police force is gradually being turned into an army. (In Kashmir it's the other way around. The army is being turned into a corrupt, administrative police force.) Upside down. Inside out. Either way, the Enemy is the People.

Pandoru mukkuvan muthinu poyi, (Once a fisherman went to sea,) Padinjaran kattathu mungi poyi, (The west wind blew and swallowed his boat,)

Twenty percent of Kerala's population were Syrian Christians, who believed that they were descendants of the one hundred Brahmins whom St. Thomas the Apostle converted to Christianity when he traveled East after the Resurrection.

It was human history, masquerading as God's Purpose, revealing herself to an under-age audience.

Not death. Just the end of living.

To understand history," Chacko said, "we have to go inside and listen to what they're saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.

The post-massacre protocol was quick and efficient- perfected by practice. Within an hour the dead bodies had been removed to the morgue in the Police Control Room, and the wounded to hospital. The street was hosed down, the blood directed into the open drains. Shops reopened. Normalcy was declared. (Normalcy was always a declaration.)

Ammu quickly learned to recognize and despise the ugly face of sympathy. They...gloated. She fought off the urge to slap them.

For the South African White minority, neo-liberalism is apartheid with a clean conscience, called Democracy.

per la libertà che aveva rinunciato ai suoi oggi per i domani degli altri. Un uomo con il volto rigato di lacrime

D'you know what happens when you hurt people?" Ammu said. "When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.

In what language does rain fall over tormented cities? —PABLO NERUDA

There cannot be a more degrading system of social organisation than the caste system,' said Ambedkar. 'It is the system that deadens, paralyses and cripples the people from helpful activity.'19

più pura la morte, più salata la sventura, (...) più onesta e paurosa la terra.

Stavano con lui per ore, accasciati per terra - punti interrogativi accoccolati in una pozza di trucioli di legno - e si chiedevano come mai Velutha sembrava sempre sapere quali forme levigate lo aspettassero all'interno di un pezzo di legno.

Gandhi always said that he wanted to live like the poorest of the poor. The question is, can poverty be simulated? Poverty, after all, is not just a question of having no money or no possessions. Poverty is about having no power.

La vecchia casa sulla collina portava il ripido tetto a due spioventi calcato sulle orecchie come un cappello.

once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.

I decided to brazen it out and ask about Musa, where he was, whether they were still together, whether they planned to get married. She said, "I'm not marrying anybody." When I asked her why she felt that way, she said she wanted to be free to die irresponsibly, without notice and for no reason.

It was hot in the church, and the white edges of the arum lilies crisped and curled. A bee died in a coffin flower.

They wore their anguish like armour, their anger slung across their bodies like ammunition belts. At that moment, perhaps because they were this armed, or because they had decided to embrace a life of death, or because they knew they were already dead, they became invincible.

If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low, down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains, and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains, and the rivers protect them.

The Mouse absorbed love like sand absorbs the sea.