Arundhati Roy

“Addiction has its own mnemonics – skin, smell, the length of the loved one’s fingers.”

— Arundhati Roy

To stay quiet is as political an act as speaking out.

— Arundhati Roy

“These days in Kashmir, you can be killed for surviving.”

— Arundhati Roy

“Et tu, Caesar? Then fall, Caesar. Et tu, Estha? Then fall, Estha.”

— Arundhati Roy

India is still flinching from a cultural insult, still looking for its identity.

— Arundhati Roy

But can we, should we, let apprehensions about the future immobilize us in the present?

— Arundhati Roy

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

— Arundhati Roy

“Even in the most uneventful of our lives, we are called upon to choose our battles...”

— Arundhati Roy

Election campaigns seem to siphon away political anger and even basic political intelligence into this great vaudeville, after which we all end…

— Arundhati Roy

“painted in weather-colors now. With brushes dipped in nature’s palette. Mossgreen. Earth-brown. Crumbleblack”

— Arundhati Roy

The American people ought to know that it is not them, but their government's policies, that are so hated.

— Arundhati Roy

“ Women are not allowed. Women are not allowed. Women are not allowed. Was it to protect the grave from the women…

— Arundhati Roy

“I use the word love loosely, and only because my vocabulary is unequal to the task of describing the precise nature of…

— Arundhati Roy

Human beings seem unable to live without war, but they are also unable to live without love.

— Arundhati Roy

Do you think that the people of South Africa, or anywhere on the continent of Africa, or India, or Pakistan are longing…

— Arundhati Roy

The idea of "human rights," for example - sometimes it bothers me. Not in itself, but because the concept of human rights…

— Arundhati Roy

In India the new government - the members of the radical Hindu Right who want India to be a 'Hindu Nation' -…

— Arundhati Roy

“It was herself she was exhausted by. She had lost the ability to keep her discrete worlds discrete—a skill that many consider…

— Arundhati Roy

“At times there's something so precise and mathematically chilling about nationalism. Build a dam to take away water AWAY from 40 million…

— Arundhati Roy

When she looked at him now, she couldn't help thinking that the man he had become bore so little resemblance to the…

— Arundhati Roy

“Was it possible to live outside language? Naturally this question did not address itself to her in words, or as a single…

— Arundhati Roy

Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a 'real' war? Are…

— Arundhati Roy

Mao said he was prepared to have millions of Chinese people perish in a nuclear war as long as China survived... I'm…

— Arundhati Roy

“They only asked for punishments that fitted their crimes. Not ones that came like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. Not ones you spent…

— Arundhati Roy

“At first of course everybody had been quiet, fearful. The funeral procession snaked its way through the drab, slushy little city in…

— Arundhati Roy

“Ironically both of them were on the pavement that night to escape their past and all that had circumscribed their lives so…

— Arundhati Roy

“At Pappachi's funeral, Mammachi cried and her contact lenses slid around in her eyes. Ammu told the twins that Mammachi was crying…

— Arundhati Roy

The trouble is that once America goes off to war, it can't very well return without having fought one. If it doesn't…

— Arundhati Roy

“Not everyone in the village was happy with the idea of having an Untouchable man's statue put up at the entrance. Particularly…

— Arundhati Roy

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame…

— Arundhati Roy

“He couldn't see her, sitting outside in the darkness, looking in at the light. A pair of actors trapped in a recondite…

— Arundhati Roy

“it could be argued that it actually began thousands of years ago. Long before the Marxists came. Before the British took Malabar,…

— Arundhati Roy

“Destroying us. You are constructing us. It’s yourselves that you are destroying.”

— Arundhati Roy

Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.

— Arundhati Roy

Anything's possible in Human Nature ...Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy.

— Arundhati Roy

I could have lived anywhere in the world now if I wanted to.

— Arundhati Roy

“I’d say that the only thing worth globalizing is dissent. It’s India’s best export.”

— Arundhati Roy

“I mean, it’s all a matter of your heart . . . NÂZIM HIKMET”

— Arundhati Roy

“Life went on. Death went on. The war went on.”

— Arundhati Roy

As I keep saying, fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was.

— Arundhati Roy