Quotes by Arundhati Roy

Cow, goat, chicken, lamb . . . only slaves eat like this,’ Musa said, heaping an impolite amount on to his plate. ‘Our stomachs are graveyards.

Theres really no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.

Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or THINK they have) gained.

They only asked for punishments that fitted their crimes. Not ones that came like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. Not ones you spent your whole life in, wandering through its maze of shelves.

His gratitude widened his smile and bent his back.

Socrates asked the key question: why should we be moral?

The story flared, then faded.

When, as happened recently in France, an attempt is made to coerce women out of the burqa rather than creating a situation in which a woman can choose what she wishes to do, it’s not about liberating her, but about unclothing her. It becomes an act of humiliation and cultural imperialism. It’s not about the burqa. It’s about the coercion. Coercing a woman out of a burqa is as bad as coercing her into one. Viewing gender in this way, shorn of social, political and economic context, makes it an issue of identity, a battle of props and costumes. It is what allowed the US government to use western feminist groups as moral cover when it invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Afghan women were (and are) in terrible trouble under the Taliban. But dropping daisy-cutters on them was not going to solve their problems.

When you live in the United States, with the roar of the free market, the roar of this huge military power, the roar of being at the heart of empire, its hard to hear the whispering of the rest of the world. And I think many US citizens want to. I dont think that all of them necessarily are co-conspirators in this concept of empire. And those who are not, need to listen to other stories in the world - other voices, other people.

We hear all this talk about integrating the world economically, but there is an argument to be made for not integrating the world economically. Because what is corporate globalization? It isnt as if the entire world is intermeshed with each other. Its not like India and Thailand or India and Korea or India and Turkey are connected. Its more like America is the hub of this huge cultural and economic airline system. Its the nodal point. Everyone has to be connected through America, and to some extent Europe.When powers at the hub of the global economy decide that you have to be X or Y, then if youre part of that network, you have to do it. You dont have the independence of being nonaligned in some way, politically or culturally or economically. If America goes down, then everybody goes down. If tomorrow the United States decides that it wants these call center jobs back, then overnight this billion-dollar industry will collapse in India. Its important for countries to develop a certain degree of economic self-sufficiency. Just in a theoretical sense, its important for everybody not to have their arms wrapped around each other or their fingers wrapped around each others throats at all times, in all kinds of ways.

The policies the US government is following are dangerous for its citizens. Its true that you can bomb or buy out anybody that you want to, but you cant control the rage thats building in the world. You just cant. And that rage will express itself in some way or the other. Condemning violence when a section of your economy is based on selling weapons and making bombs and piling up chemical and biological weapons? When the soul of your culture worships violence? On what grounds are you going to condemn terrorism, unless you change your attitude toward violence?

Then to give the kids a historical perspective, Chacko told them about the earth woman. He made them imagine that the earth - 4600 million years old - was a 46 year old woman- as old as Aleyamma teaacher, who gave them Malayalam lessons. It had taken the whole of earth woman’s life for the earth to become what it was. For the oceans to part. For the mountains to rise. The earth woman was 11 yrs old when the first single celled organisms appeared. The first animals, creatures like worms and jellyfish, appeared only when she was forty. She was over forty five - just 8 months ago - when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The whole of human civilization as we know it, began only 2 hrs ago in the earth woman’s life…

It isnt a coincidence that the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat happened after September 11. Gujarat is also one place where the toxic waste of the World Trade Center is being dumped right now. This waste is being dumped in Gujarat, and then taken of to Ludhiana and places like that to be recycled. I think its quite a metaphor. The demonization of Muslims has also been given legitimacy by the worlds superpower, by the emperor himself. We are at a stage where democracy - this corrupted, scandalous version of democracy - is the problem. So much of what politicians do is with an eye on elections. Wars are fought as election campaigns. In India, Muslims are killed as part of election campaigns. In 1984, after the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi, the Congress Party won, hands down. We must ask ourselves very serious questions about this particular brand of democracy.

I think it is dangerous to confuse the idea of democracy with elections. Just because you have elections doesnt mean youre a democratic country. Theyre a very vitally important part of a democracy. But there are other things that ought to function as checks and balances. If elections are the only thing that matter, then people are going to resort to anything to win that election.

Any governments condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely argued, non-violent dissent. And yet, whats happening is just the opposite. The world over, non-violent resistance movements are being crushed and broken. If we do not respect and honour them, by default we privilege those who turn to violent means.

Somewhere along the way, Capitalism reduced the idea of justice to mean just human rights, and the idea of dreaming of equality became blasphemous. We are not fighting to tinker with reforming a system that needs to be replaced.

Do we need weapons to fight wars? Or do we need wars to create markets for weapons?

Capitalism is destroying the planet. The two old tricks that dug it out of past crises--War and Shopping--simply will not work.

How can you measure progress if you dont know what it costs and who has paid for it? How can the market put a price on things - food, clothes, electricity, running water - when it doesnt take into account the REAL cost of production?

They looked at each other. They werent thinking anymore. The time for that had come and gone. Smashed smiles lay ahead of them. But that would be later. Lay Ter.