To me, there is nothing higher than fiction. Nothing. It is fundamentally who I am. I am a teller of stories. For me, that's the only way I can make sense of the world, with all the dance that it involves.
Arundhati RoyRead
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.
Interpretation
This quote explores the complex emotions that drive human behavior, particularly in relation to fear and power.
Arundhati Roy's quote reflects on the inherent, often unconscious feelings that compel humans to act in ways that may seem contradictory. It delves into the primal instincts behind contempt, connecting our fear of nature, the fear men hold towards women, and the fear of powerlessness, suggesting that these fears drive a destructive impulse in humanity when faced with the things we cannot control or venerate.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the psychological motivations behind environmental destruction.
To me, there is nothing higher than fiction. Nothing. It is fundamentally who I am. I am a teller of stories. For me, that's the only way I can make sense of the world, with all the dance that it involves.
When she listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch.
Caste is about dividing people up in ways that preclude every form of solidarity, because even in the lowest castes, there are divisions and sub-castes, and everyone's co-opted into the business of this hierarchical, silo-ised society.
When I decided to write 'The God of Small Things', I had been working in cinema. It was almost a decision to downshift from there. I thought that 300 people would read it. But it created a platform of trust.
In California, there are huge problems because of dams. I'm against big dams, per se, because I think that they are economically unfeasible. They're ecologically unsustainable. And they're hugely undemocratic.
To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination.
I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.
For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it
Compassion is the basis of morality.
The Holocaust teaches us that nature, even in its cruelest moments, is benign in comparison with man when he loses his moral compass and his reason.
The mountains have rules. they are harsh rules, but they are there, and if you keep to them you are safe. A mountain is not like men. A mountain is sincere. The weapons to conquer it exist inside you, inside your soul.
He has to conceal what he would most wish to make public, and make public what he would most wish to conceal.
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