Quotes from Arundhati Roy

She viewed ethnic cleansing, famine and genocide as direct threats to her furniture.

The division in opinion on the use of the term (i.e - fascism) comes down to whether you believe that fascism became fascism only after a continent was destroyed and millions of people were exterminated in gas chambers, or whether you believe that fascism is an ideology that led to those high crimes - that can lead to those crimes - and that those who subscribe to it are fascists.

And once again, only the Small Things were said. The Big Things lurked unsaid inside.

Capitalism is destroying the planet. The two old tricks that dug it out of past crises--War and Shopping--simply will not work.

a) Going to Oxford didn't necessarily make a person clever. (b) Cleverness didn't necessarily make a good prime minister. (c) If a person couldn't even run a pickle factory profitably, how was that person going to run a whole country? And, most important of all: (d) All Indian mothers are obsessed with their sons and are therefore poor judges of their abilities.

She could hear her hair growing. It sounded like something crumbling. A burnt thing crumbling. Coal. Toast. Moths crisped on a light bulb. She remembered reading somewhere that even after people died, their hair and nails kept growing. Like starlight, travelling through the universe long after the stars themselves had died. Like cities. Fizzy, effervescent, simulating the illusion of life while the planet they had plundered died around them.

Internationa] Aid is just another praetorian business enterprise.

She wasn't a woman who smiled and said hello.

N O T H I N G 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? y

Rahel knew that this had happened because she had been hoping that it wouldn't. She hadn't learned to control her Hopes yet.

It simply did not occur to her that she had hurt him as deeply as she had, because she still thought of herself as an ordinary woman, and him as an extraordinary man.

The war for the Narmada valley is not just some exotic tribal war, or a remote rural war or even an exclusively Indian war. Its a war for the rivers and the mountains and the forests of the world. All sorts of warriors from all over the world, anyone who wishes to enlist, will be honored and welcomed. Every kind of warrior will be needed. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, judges, journalists, students, sportsmen, painters, actors, singers, lovers . . . The borders are open, folks! Come on in.

His eyes were polite yet maleficent, as though he was making an effort to be civil to the photographer while plotting to murder his wife.

When you live in the United States, with the roar of the free market, the roar of this huge military power, the roar of being at the heart of empire, it's hard to hear the whispering of the rest of the world. And I think many US citizens want to. I don't think that all of them necessarily are co-conspirators in this concept of empire. And those who are not, need to listen to other stories in the world - other voices, other people.

they asked the poor what it was like to be poor, the hungry what it was like to be hungry, the homeless what it was like to be homeless.

Mar gayee bulbul qafas mein Keh gayee sayyaad se Apni sunehri gaand mein Tu thoons le fasl-e-bahaar She died in her cage, the little bird, These words she left for her captor – Please take the spring harvest And shove it up your gilded arse

If you think of the world as a global village, a fight between India and Pakistan is like a fight between the poorest people in the poorest quarters - the Adivasis and the Dalits. And in the meantime, the zamindars are laying the oil pipelines and selling both parties weapons.

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

Searching for the Man who lives in him was perhaps what he really meant, because certainly no beast has essayed the boundless, infinitely inventive art of human hatred. No beast can match its range and power.

Debating Imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?

Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter.

It's a battle of those who know how to think against those who know how to hate.

Does a country fall into fascism the way a person falls in love? Or, more accurately, in hate?

Ammu's tears made everything that had so far seemed unreal, real.