Speaking for myself, I am no flag waver, no patriot, and I am fully aware that venality, brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American empire? I speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king.

— Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy Quotes

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

— Arundhati Roy

A bee died in a coffin flower.

— Arundhati Roy

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.

— Arundhati Roy

She speaks the most beautiful Urdu.

— Arundhati Roy

Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest.

— Arundhati Roy

A war that we have 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.

— Arundhati Roy

He looked cheerful, as though he was with an imaginary friend whose company he enjoyed.

— Arundhati Roy

The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber. It was this that grew inside her, and eventually led her to love by night the man her children loved.

— Arundhati Roy

D’you know why God made Hijras? It was an experiment. He decided to create something, a living creature that is incapable of happiness. So he made us.

— Arundhati Roy

It was possible for Tilo and Musa to have this strange conversation about a third loved one, because they were concurrently sweethearts and ex-sweethearts, lovers and ex-lovers, siblings and ex-siblings, classmates and ex-classmates. Because they trusted each other so peculiarly that they knew, even if they were hurt by it, that whoever it was that the other person loved had to be worth loving. In matters of the heart, they had a virtual forest of safety nets.

— Arundhati Roy

She thought of Chacko’s laugh, and a smile stayed in her eyes for a long time.

— Arundhati Roy

History in live performance.

— Arundhati Roy

He made her feel as though the world belonged to them...

— Arundhati Roy

For one struck down by Cupid’s bow Life becomes burdensome, isn’t that so?

— Arundhati Roy

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

— Arundhati Roy

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.

— Arundhati Roy

India lives in several centuries at the same time.

— Arundhati Roy

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.

— Arundhati Roy

Margaret Kochamma found herself drawn towards him like a plant in a dark room towards a wedge of light.

— Arundhati Roy

An unmixable mix. The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of a suicide bomber.

— Arundhati Roy
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