“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.
That is their mystery and their magic.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“If you're happy in a dream, does that count?”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims...”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“But what was there to say?
Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.
Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house—the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture—must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“There is a war that makes us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“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, quote from The God of Small Things
“Things can change in a day.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“If he touched her, he couldn't talk to her, if he loved her he couldn't leave, if he spoke he couldn't listen, if he fought he couldn't win.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“Some things come with their own punishments.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace Worse Things kept happening”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these:
a) Anything can happen to anyone.
and
b) It is best to be prepared.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don't fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that is purloined. ”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“Being with him made her feel as though her soul had escaped from the narrow confines of her island country into the vast, extravagant spaces of his. He made her feel as though the world belonged to them- as though it lay before them like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat.
He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.
So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people’s eyes and became an exasperating expression.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“Her grief grieved her. His devastated her.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
“And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.”
― Arundhati Roy, quote from The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy
Born place: in Shillong, Meghalaya, India
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“It was possible, as far as they knew, that the western shore, which in fifty years’ time would be christened New Jersey, was in fact the backdoor of China, that India, with its steamy profusion of gods and curries, lay just beyond those bluffs.”
― Russell Shorto, quote from The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
“It was a bold, wild life for a faerie - most never even left their forests - but she was a bold, wild lass, and so were her daughter and granddaughter after her, and their place in the world was everywhere and nowhere, like gypsies on wing. No home had they but their caravans and campfires, and no family but the one they'd cobbled together of crows, creatures and kindred souls they'd met on their endless journey round and round the world.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Blackbringer
“If we can expect another journey tomorrow, we should secure horses," Ferrin went on. "And if the sun will be shining, perhaps a goat for Aram."
"Keep it up," Aram dared him through clenched teeth.
"Is a goat too large and unruly?" Ferrin asked? "Maybe we should saddle a raccoon."
"Odd how these taunts tend to fade after sundown," Aram growled, taking a large bite of bread.
"But a new day always dawns," Ferrin replied. "And we can all use some entertainment."
Aram glowered. "Then perhaps tonight I should pull you apart and let the others puzzle you back together."
"That's the spirit!" Ferrin applauded. "Taunt back! I get the sense you've seldom had to deal with ridicule."
Aram appeared to be resisting a pleased little smile.”
― Brandon Mull, quote from Seeds of Rebellion
“Because, if you could love someone, and keep loving them, without being loved back . . . then that love had to be real. It hurt too much to be anything else.”
― quote from Kill Me Softly
“The best part is that you can use any number of different interfaces." Tap, tap, drag. "This one's made of Lego blocks, for younger kids. See how there's a Lego representation of the DNA?”
― Michael Grant, quote from Eve & Adam
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