602 Quotes by Arundhati Roy

It had been quiet in Estha's head until Rahel came. But with her she had brought the sound of passing trains, and the light and shade that falls on you if you have a window seat.

She could hear her hair growing.

And once again, only the Small Things were said. The Big Things lurked unsaid inside. (165)

Once you understand the process of corporate globalization, you have to see that what happened in Argentina, the devastation of Argentina by the IMF, is part of the same machine that is destroying Iraq. Both are efforts to break open and to control markets. And so Argentina is destroyed by the chequebook, and Iraq is destroyed by the cruise missile. If the chequebook won't work, the cruise missile will. Hell hath no fury like a market scorned.

To fuel yet another war this time against Iraq by cynically manipulating people's grief, by packaging it for TVspecials sponsored by corporations selling detergent and running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain itof meaning. What we are seeing now is a vulgar display of the business of grief, the commerce of grief, the pillagingof even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a State to do to itspeople.

She smelled the river on him.

One beach-colored.One brown.One Loved.One Loved a Little Less.

He held his mundu spread above his head to dry. The wind lifted it like a sail. He was suddenly happy. Things will get worse he thought to himself. Then better. He was walking swiftly now, towards the Heart of Darkness. As lonely as a wolf.The God of Loss. The God of Small Things. Naked but for his nail varnish. (274)

Estha carried them home in the crowded train. A quite bubble floating in a sea of noise