Arundhati Roy

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.

— Arundhati Roy

“The nights are clear but suffused with sloth and sullen expectation.”

— Arundhati Roy

I stand by what I write and follow through on what I write.

— Arundhati Roy

People always loved best what they identified most with.

— Arundhati Roy

His gratitude widened his smile and bent his back.

— Arundhati Roy

“proposes Nazi-style purges of Indian Muslims.”

— Arundhati Roy

“Do we need weapons to fight wars? Or do we need wars to create markets for weapons?”

— Arundhati Roy

Going to Oxford didn't necessarily make a person clever.

— Arundhati Roy

India's a very interesting place... there's no formal opposition, but there's genuine on-the-ground opposition.

— Arundhati Roy

When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin,…

— Arundhati Roy

There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.

— Arundhati Roy

“On Rahel's heart Pappachi's moth snapped open its somber wings. Out. In. And lifted its legs. Up. Down.”

— Arundhati Roy

There can be nothing more humiliating for a writer of fiction to have to do than restate a case that has already…

— Arundhati Roy

“As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between…

— Arundhati Roy

“Fiercely competitive TV channels covered the story of the breaking city as “Breaking News.” Nobody pointed out the irony.”

— Arundhati Roy

“Marxism was a simple substitute for Christianity. Replace God with Marx, Satan with the bourgeoisie, Heaven with a classless society, the Church…

— Arundhati Roy

Our dreams have been doctored.We belong no where. We sail unanchored on troubled seas.We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will…

— Arundhati Roy

When I decided to write 'The God of Small Things', I had been working in cinema. It was almost a decision to…

— Arundhati Roy

I think it was 50 million people across the world who marched against the war in Iraq. It was perhaps the biggest…

— Arundhati Roy

Your enemies are always manufactured to suit your purpose, right? How can you have a good enemy? You have to have an…

— Arundhati Roy

It's very easy for me to begin to believe the publicity about myself, whether for or against. It can give you an…

— Arundhati Roy

Capitalism’s real “grave-diggers” may end up being its own delusional Cardinals, who have turned ideology into faith. Despite their strategic brilliance, they…

— Arundhati Roy

“To be present in history, even as nothing more than a chuckle, was a universe away from being absent from it, from…

— Arundhati Roy

“Death was everywhere. Death was everything. Career. Desire. Dream. Poetry. Love. Youth itself. Dying became just another way of living. Graveyards sprang…

— Arundhati Roy

“Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy…

— Arundhati Roy

“Normality in our part of the world is a bit like a boiled egg: its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a…

— Arundhati Roy

“And yet , the burden of perpetual apprehension that she had carried around for years - of suddenly receiving news of death…

— Arundhati Roy

“Any government's condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely argued, non-violent dissent.…

— Arundhati Roy

“NOTHING I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there’s lots to write…

— Arundhati Roy

Corporations that are turning over these huge profits can own everything: the media, the universities, the mines, the weapons industry, insurance hospitals,…

— Arundhati Roy

“The sky was thick with TV. If you wore special glasses you could see them spinning through the sky among the bats…

— Arundhati Roy

“With Partition, in 1947, Roy writes, "God's carotid burst open on the new border between India and Pakistan and a million people…

— Arundhati Roy

“Ammu shook her and told her to Stoppit and she Stoppited.”

— Arundhati Roy

I could weep for a river-valley, and I have. But for a country? Oh man, I don't know.

— Arundhati Roy

Fiction is too beautiful to be about just one thing. It should be about everything.

— Arundhati Roy

Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds.

— Arundhati Roy

“Revolutions can, and often have, begun with reading. The Doctor and the Saint”

— Arundhati Roy

Some things come with their own punishments.

— Arundhati Roy

Humbling was a nice word, Rahel thought. Humbling along without a care in the world

— Arundhati Roy

“In moments of crisis it helps to take the long view.”

— Arundhati Roy