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I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.

Arundhati Roy

Whatever else their faults may be, they were not radical Islamist states – Iraq was not, Syria is not, Libya was not. The most radical fundamentalist Islamist state is, of course, your America’s Saudi Arabia.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Difference Fundamental Mistake Politics Terrorism
NGOs are dangerous. They do what the missionaries used to do in Colonial times. They are Trojan Horses. The worse the situation, the more the NGOs.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Dangerous Time Worst
Making bombs will only destroy us. It doesn’t matter whether we use them or not. They will destroy us either way.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Destroy Destruction Weapon
To annihilate indigenous populations eventually paves the way to our own annihilation. They are the only people who practice sustainable living. We think they are relics of the past, but they may be the gatekeepers to our future.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Future Live Ourselves Past People Practice Thinking
Excitement always leads to tears.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Destination Excitement One Liner Path Tears
A political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Heart Politics Struggle Woman
Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Difference One Liner Sick Terrorism
Money need not be our only reward.
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Money Need One Liner Ourselves Reward
Things can change in a day.
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Change One Liner
When people say “the people” or “the public” as though it’s the final repository of all morality, I sometimes flinch.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Moral Myself People Reaction
Railing against the past will not heal us. History has happened. It’s over and done with. All we can do is to change its course by encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don’t.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Change Destroy History Love Past
The NGO-ization of politics threatens to turn resistance into a well-mannered, reasonable, salaried, 9-to-5 job. With a few perks thrown in. Real resistance has real consequences. And no salary.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Money Politics Reaction Reality Reason Resistance Scare
Sometimes there’s truth in old cliches. There can be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be no justice.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Justice Old Peace Reality Resistance Truth
States have invested themselves with the right to legitimise violence – so who gets criminalised and delegitimised? Only – or well that’s excessive – usually, the resistance.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Investment Legal Resistence Right Violence
Is globalization about ‘the eradication of world poverty,’ or is it a mutant variety of colonialism, remote controlled and digitally operated?
ARUNDHATI ROY

Control Digital Poor World
You have come to a stage where you almost have to work on yourself. You know, on finding some tranquility with which to respond to these things, because I realize that the biggest risk that many of us run is beginning to get inured to the horrors.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Beginning Horror Risk Tranquility Work
Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Break Dance Different Fiction Morning Myself Story Technology Wake Up
Democracy no longer means what it was meant to. It has been taken back into the workshop. Each of its institutions has been hollowed out, and it has been returned to us as a vehicle for the free market, of the corporations. For the corporations, by the corporations.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Coporation Democracy Freedom Institution Return
The revolution cannot be funded. It’s not the imagination of trusts and foundations that’s going to bring real change.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Change Foundation Fund Imagination Money Reality Revolution Trust
I feel ashamed that the new, nuclear, neo-liberal India thinks of itself as a ‘natural ally’ of Israel. Ever since India began to call itself an emerging superpower, it has become a slavish, groveling satellite state of the US.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Feeling Shame Slave Thinking
The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Innocent Politics Quiet Responsibility See Trouble Yourself
The only thing worth globalizing is dissent.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Important One Liner Worth
Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Corruption Death Freedom Injustice Justice Mindset Nation Poor Prison Silence Talk Writing
The idea of justice – even just dreaming of justice – is revolutionary. The language of human rights tends to accept a status quo that is intrinsically unjust – and then tries to make it more accountable.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Dreams Human Ideas Justice Language Responsibilty Revolution Right
I am a woman who is a granddaughter of a lady who used to be beaten on the head by her husband, of a mother who went through hell because she was divorced and had to bring up these kids. And I can take 10 men out to lunch and pay the bill, and nobody even thinks twice about it. So don’t mess with me.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Divorce Hell Husband Injustice Mess Mom Myself Oppression Pay Price Violence Woman
People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed. Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Death Kill Lose Mindset People War Willing Win
That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Care Love People Word

I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.

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I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.

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