Quote

It was a grand old house, the Ayemenem House, but aloof-looking. As though it had little to do with the people who lived in it. Like an old man with rheumy eyes watching children play, seeing only transience in their shrill elation and their whole-hearted commitment to life.

Arundhati Roy

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Arundhati Roy
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: September 24
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Suzanna Arundhati Roy
Men
Though
Hearted
Life
Eye
Grand
Like
House
Commitment
People
Littles
Watching
Little
Lived
Shrill
Play
Seeing
Transience
Whole
Eyes
Elation
Children
Looking
Aloof

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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It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened
Arundhati Roy
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Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
Arundhati Roy
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Today, the Indian government is trying to present privatization as the alternative to the state, to public enterprise. But privatization is only a further evolution of the centralized state, where the state says that they have the right to give the entire power production in Maharashtra to Enron.
Arundhati Roy
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To stay quiet is as political an act as speaking out.
Arundhati Roy
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By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men. They were already familiar with the smell. Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze.
Arundhati Roy
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History is really a study of the future, not the past.
Arundhati Roy
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India lives in several centuries at the same time.
Arundhati Roy
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The U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the free press, is that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests.
Arundhati Roy
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Some things come with their own punishments.
Arundhati Roy
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When I'm outside the cities I do feel optimistic. There is such grandeur in India and so much beauty.
Arundhati Roy
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Peace, Inc. is sometimes as worrying as War, Inc. It's a way of managing public anger. We're all being managed, and we don't even know it.
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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But remember that if the struggle were to resort to violence, it will lose vision, beauty and imagination. Most dangerous of all, it will marginalize and eventually victimize women. And a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all.
Arundhati Roy
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In India the new government - the members of the radical Hindu Right who want India to be a 'Hindu Nation' - they're bigots. Butchers. Massacres are their unofficial election campaigns - orchestrated to polarise communities and bring in the vote.
Arundhati Roy
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If you are happy in a dream, Ammu, does that count? Estha asked. Does what count? The happiness does it count?. She knew exactly what he meant, her son with his spoiled puff. Because the truth is, that only what counts, counts.....If you eat fish in a dream, does it count? Does it mean you've eaten fish?
Arundhati Roy
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What is happening to our world is almost too colossal for human comprehension to contain...To contemplate its girth and its circumference, to attempt to define it, to try and fight it all at once, is impossible. The only way to combat it is by fighting specific wars in specific ways.
Arundhati Roy
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America is like some crazed, bewildered, rich giant bumbling around in a poor area with his pockets stuffed with money, and lots of weapons - just throwing stuff around.
Arundhati Roy
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Acceptance spells death to a writer.
Arundhati Roy
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Snowden is the thoughtful, courageous saint of liberal reform. And Julian Assange is a sort of radical, feral prophet who has been prowling this wilderness since he was 16 years old.
Arundhati Roy