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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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Arundhati Roy
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: September 24
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Suzanna Arundhati Roy
Things
Seen
Seeing
Political
Certain
Nothing
Something

More quotes by Arundhati Roy

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India's a very interesting place... there's no formal opposition, but there's genuine on-the-ground opposition.
Arundhati Roy
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Empathy may be the single most important quality that must be nurtured to give peace a fighting chance.
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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I don't think the state will allow people to occupy a particular space unless it feels that allowing that will end up in a kind of complacency, and the effectiveness and urgency of the protest will be lost.
Arundhati Roy
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The fact is that America's weapons systems have made it impossible for anybody to confront it militarily. So, all you have is your wits and your cunning, and your ability to fight in the way the Iraqis are fighting.
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
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Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a multitiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the U.S. government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media.
Arundhati Roy
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Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.
Arundhati Roy
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When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.
Arundhati Roy
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Three-quarters of India lives on the edge of the market economy. You can't tell them that only those who can afford water can have it.
Arundhati Roy
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With the certitude of a true believer, Vellya Paapen had assured the twins that there was no such thing in the world as a black cat. He said that there were only black cat chaped holes in the universe.
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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A sparrow lay dead on the backseat. She had found her way through a hole in the windscreen, tempted by some seat-sponge for her nest. She never found her way out. No one noticed her panicked car-window appeals. She died on the backseat, with her legs in the air. Like a joke.
Arundhati Roy
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Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.
Arundhati Roy
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We need a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction.
Arundhati Roy
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In a way, writing is an incredible act of individualism, producing your language, and yet to use it from the heart of a crowd as opposed to as an individual performance is a conflicting thing. I do stand alone, and yet it's not about being an individual or being ambitious.
Arundhati Roy
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How carelessly imperial power vivisected ancient civilizations. Palestine and Kashmir are imperial Britain's festering, blood-drenched gifts to the modem world. Both are fault lines in the raging international con�icts of today.
Arundhati Roy
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Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.
Arundhati Roy
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It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.
Arundhati Roy
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Stable markets, unstable world. Efficiency. Everybody hears about it. It's enough to make you want to be pro-inefficiency and pro-corruption.
Arundhati Roy