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I could weep for a river-valley, and I have. But for a country? Oh man, I don’t know.

Arundhati Roy

Human rights are fundamental rights, they are the minimum, the very least we demand. Too often, they become the goal itself. What should be the minimum becomes the maximum – all we are supposed to expect – but human rights aren’t enough. The goal is, and must always be, justice.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Demand Enough Expectation Fundamental Human Justice Right
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Breathe Herself Journey Myself Possible Quiet World
Excitement always leads to tears.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Destination Excitement One Liner Path Tears
Violating human rights is integral to the project of neoliberalism and global hegemony.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Human Integrity Project Right
Fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was. My whole effort is to remove that distinction. The writer is the midwife of understanding. It’s very important for me to tell politics like a story, to make it real.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Fiction Important Politics Reality Story Truth Understand Wife Writing
Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Bone Break Constitution Ordinary Story
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.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Creation Destroy Gratitude Help Lost Power Thinking
But remember that if the struggle were to resort to violence, it will lose vision, beauty and imagination. Most dangerous of all, it will marginalize and eventually victimize women. And 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 Lose Politics Remember Struggle Violence Vision Woman
Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Death Kind Nation Reason War
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
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
Change is one thing. Acceptance is another.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Acceptance Change
Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Difference One Liner Sick Terrorism
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
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
Literature is the opposite of a nuclear bomb.
ARUNDHATI ROY

Literature Opposite Weapon

I could weep for a river-valley, and I have. But for a country? Oh man, I don’t know.

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I could weep for a river-valley, and I have. But for a country? Oh man, I don’t know.

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