{"author":"Arundhati Roy","author_id":"Arundhati+Roy","total_quotes":111,"quotes":[{"text":"It turned out to be a war which, unfortunately for Comrade Pillai, would end almost before it began. Victory was gifted to him wrapped and beribboned, on a silver tray. Only then, when it was too late, and Paradise Pickles slumped softly to the floor without so much as a murmur or even the pretense of resistance, did Comrade Pillai realize that what he really needed was the process of war more than the outcome of victory. War could have been the stallion that he rode, part of, if not all, the way to the Legislative Assembly, whereas victory left him no better off than when he started out.He broke the eggs but burned the omelette.","author":"Arundhati Roy","tags":["defeat","eggs","omelette","politics","victory","war"],"id":4107,"author_id":"Arundhati+Roy"},{"text":"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.","author":"Arundhati Roy","tags":["9-11","grief","iraq","state-manipulation"],"id":4278,"author_id":"Arundhati+Roy"},{"text":"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.","author":"Arundhati Roy","tags":["emptiness","forbidden","grief","happiness","inspirational","laws","love","quietness","sadness"],"id":4613,"author_id":"Arundhati+Roy"},{"text":"N O T H I N GI would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there’s lots to write about. That can’t be done in Kashmir. It’s not sophisticated, what happens here. There’s too much blood for good literature.Q 1: Why is it not sophisticated?Q 2: What is the acceptable amount of blood for good literature?Y.","author":"Arundhati Roy","tags":["blood","bloodshed","kashmir"],"id":7154,"author_id":"Arundhati+Roy"},{"text":"In the last photograph of her, the bullet wound looked like a cheerful summer rose arranged just above her left ear. A few petals had fallen on her kaffan, the white shroud she was wrapped in before she was laid to rest.","author":"Arundhati Roy","tags":["blood","dead-body","rose","shroud","wound"],"id":10065,"author_id":"Arundhati+Roy"},{"text":"I have nothing against romance. I believe that we must hold on to the right to dream and to be romantic. But an Indian village is not something that I would romanticize that easily.","author":"Arundhati Roy","tags":["believe","dream","i believe "],"id":20544,"author_id":"Arundhati+Roy"},{"text":"Normalcy was declared. (Normalcy was always a declaration.).","author":"Arundhati Roy","tags":["normal","normalcy","war"],"id":31199,"author_id":"Arundhati+Roy"},{"text":"And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows secretly, deeply, that no war, no act of revenge, no daisy-cutters dropped on someone else’s loved ones or someone else’s children, will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.","author":"Arundhati Roy","tags":["death","peace","terrorism","war"],"id":31955,"author_id":"Arundhati+Roy"},{"text":"The twins were too young to know that these were only history’s henchmen. Sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws. Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear—civilization’s fear of nature, men’s fear of women, power’s fear of powerlessness. Man’s subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify.","author":"Arundhati Roy","tags":["civilisation","history","human-nature","psychology"],"id":43574,"author_id":"Arundhati+Roy"},{"text":"His gratitude widened his smile and bent his back.","author":"Arundhati Roy","tags":["gratitude","smile"],"id":49730,"author_id":"Arundhati+Roy"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":111,"pages":12,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}