Arundhati Roy quotes

Arundhati Roy is an Indian author, activist, and public intellectual, best known for her novel "The God of Small Things." Her works explore issues of social justice, environmentalism, and politics in contemporary India. She continues to influence global debates through her writing and activism. Here are 159 of her quotes:

You have come to a stage where you almost have to work on yourself. You know, on finding some tranquility with which to respond to these things, because I realize that the biggest risk that many of us run is beginning to get inured to the horrors.

Arundhati Roy

The American way of life is not sustainable. It doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.

Arundhati Roy

He held her as though she was a gift. Given to him in love. Something still and small. Unbearably precious.

Arundhati Roy

I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.

Arundhati Roy

Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe.

Arundhati Roy

If you're happy in a dream, does that count?

Arundhati Roy

There is only one dream worth having...to live while you are alive, and die only when you are dead.

Arundhati Roy

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

... To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget. ...

Arundhati Roy

Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century.

Arundhati Roy

Things can change in a day.

Arundhati Roy

Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.

Arundhati Roy

Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.

Arundhati Roy

Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.

Arundhati Roy

It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened.

Arundhati Roy

The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it, and are now in the process of selling it.

Arundhati Roy

What came for them? Not death. Just the end of living.

Arundhati Roy

The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.

Arundhati Roy

It is true that success is the most boring thing, it is tinny and brittle, failure runs deeper. Success is dangerous. I have a very complicated relationship with that word.

Arundhati Roy

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

There is a war that makes us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.

Arundhati Roy

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.

Arundhati Roy