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All my books are accidental books - they come from reacting to things and thinking about things and engaging in a real way. They are not about, 'Oh, did it get a good review in the Guardian?' I don't care.

Arundhati Roy

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Arundhati Roy
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: September 24
Author
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Suzanna Arundhati Roy
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More quotes by Arundhati Roy

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Every strategy for real social change - land reform, education, public health, the equitable distribution of natural resources ... - has been cleverly, cunningly, and consistently scuttled and rendered ineffectual by those castes and that class of people which has a stranglehold on the political process.
Arundhati Roy
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That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.
Arundhati Roy
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The world's 'freeest' country has the highest number in prison.
Arundhati Roy
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Anything's possible in Human Nature ...Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy.
Arundhati Roy
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May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.
Arundhati Roy
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I never do anything because I'm a celebrity, as a rule. I do what I do as a citizen.
Arundhati Roy
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If we were to lose the ability to be emotional, if we were to lose the ability to be angry, to be outraged, we would be robots. And I refuse that.
Arundhati Roy
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Even capitalists must surely admit, that intellectually at least, socialism is a worthy opponent. It imparts intelligence even to its adversaries.
Arundhati Roy
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He walked on water. Perhaps. But could he have *swum* on land? In matching knickers and dark glasses? With his Fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo? In pointy shoes and a puff? Would he have had the imagination?
Arundhati Roy
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It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas, we are being asked to believe that the U.S. marines are actually on a feminist mission.
Arundhati Roy
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Once you've seen certain things, you can't un-see them, and seeing nothing is as political an act as seeing something.
Arundhati Roy
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The revolution cannot be funded. It's not the imagination of trusts and foundations that's going to bring real change.
Arundhati Roy
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Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease.
Arundhati Roy
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To stay quiet is as political an act as speaking out.
Arundhati Roy
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Biology designed the dance. Terror timed it. Dictated the rhythm with which their bodies answered each other. As though they already knew that for each tremor of pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain. As though they knew that how far they went would be measured against how far they would be taken.
Arundhati Roy
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When she looked at him now, she couldn't help thinking that the man he had become bore so little resemblance to the boy he had been. His smile was the only piece of baggage he had carried with him from boyhood into manhood.
Arundhati Roy
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The NGO-ization of politics threatens to turn resistance into a well-mannered, reasonable, salaried, 9-to-5 job. With a few perks thrown in. Real resistance has real consequences. And no salary.
Arundhati Roy
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Ammu loved her children (of course), but their wide-eyed vulnerability and their willingness to love people who didn't really love them exasperated her and sometimes made her want to hurt them-- just as an education, a precaution.
Arundhati Roy
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The great irony is that people who live in remote areas, who are illiterate and don't own TVs, are in some ways more free because they are beyond the reach of indoctrination by the modern mass media.
Arundhati Roy
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India has millions of internally displaced people. And now, they are putting their bodies on the line and fighting back. They are being killed and imprisoned in their thousands. Theirs is a battle of the imagination, a battle for the redefinition of the meaning of civilisation, of the meaning of happiness, of the meaning of fulfilment.
Arundhati Roy