“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
See more on GoodReads
“It was now Oliver's staunch belief that ladies - more specifically, Miss Harriet Peabody - had been put on the earth in order to create havoc with his well-organized life.”
― Jen Turano, quote from After a Fashion
“I don't know what sort of occasion I was waiting for...because everyday was a special occasion with your father.”
― Donna VanLiere, quote from The Christmas Shoes
“She braked at Washington, watched the”
― James Patterson, quote from The 5th Horseman
“They are, from this period, to be considered as Actors on a most conspicuous Theatre, which seems to be peculiarly designated by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity.”
― Joseph J. Ellis, quote from Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
“The greatness of God rouses fear within us, but His goodness encourages us not to be afraid of Him. To fear and not be afraid - that is the paradox of faith.”
― A.W. Tozer, quote from The Knowledge of the Holy
A New Hope
The Treatment
The Scribbler Guardi...
The Silver Swan
Feel the Fear and Do...
MilkweedBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
