Quotes from Arundhati Roy

I'm an activist; I have to be angry all the time. That's what we do!

They looked at each other. They weren't thinking anymore. The time for that had come and gone. Smashed smiles lay ahead of them. But that would be later. Lay Ter.

I think that I was quite a grown-up child, and I have been a pretty childish adult.

It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened

Being with him made her feel as though her soul had escaped from the narrow confines of her island country into the vast, extravagant spaces of his. He made her feel as though the world belonged to them- as though it lay before them like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined.

There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.

Her grief grieved her. His devastated her.

Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.

Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant.

Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.

And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.

When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.

The trouble is that once you see it, you can't unsee it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable.

People always loved best what they identified most with.

Smells, like music, hold memories. She breathed deep, and bottled it up for posterity.

The moment I saw her, a part of me walked out of my body and wrapped itself around her. And there it still remains.

That it really began in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.

Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.

And when we look in through the windows, all we see are shadows. And when we try and listen, all we hear is a whispering. And we cannot understand the whispering, because our minds have been invaded by a war. A war that we have both won and lost. The very worst sort of war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that has made us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.

If you are happy in a dream, Ammu, does that count? Estha asked. Does what count? The happiness does it count?. She knew exactly what he meant, her son with his spoiled puff. Because the truth is, that only what counts, counts.....If you eat fish in a dream, does it count? Does it mean you've eaten fish?

He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn't kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn't see her. If he saw her, he couldn't feel her.

Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a 'real' war? Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert with guns pointed at each other's heads and fingers trembling on the trigger?

Enemies can't break your spirit, only friends can.

Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil, but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power. Twenty-first century market capitalism, American-style, will fail for the same reasons. Both are edifices constructed by human intelligence, undone by human nature.