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
To call someone anti-American, indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that matter anti-Indian, or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie, you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not Good, you're Evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the binary thinking that defines people as either wholly good or bad based on loyalty to a specific identity or ideology.
Arundhati Roy argues against the simplistic categorization of individuals as 'anti-American' or 'pro-American', suggesting that such labels reveal a lack of imagination and a failure to understand complex social dynamics. The quote illustrates how an exclusive viewpoint propagates divisive narratives, compelling people to conform to reductive binaries that limit their understanding of global citizenship and the intricacies of human relationships.
Themes
ImaginationBinary ThinkingIdentitySocial DynamicsDivision
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a lecture on the importance of critical thinking in political discourse.
More from Arundhati Roy
All quotes →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.
Arundhati RoyRead
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.
Arundhati RoyRead
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.
Arundhati RoyRead
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.
Arundhati RoyRead
To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination.
Arundhati RoyRead
Similar quotes
All must admit that the reception of the teachings of Christ results in the purest patriotism, in the most scrupulous fidelity to public trust, and in the best type of citizenship.
Grover ClevelandRead
I've become convinced that nostalgia is a fundamentally unhealthy modality. When you see it, it's usually attached to something else that's really, seriously bad. I don't traffic in nostalgia. We're becoming a global culture.
William GibsonRead
Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice, which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds.
Dante AlighieriRead
Extinction is the beginning of the path: it is traveling to God Most High. Guidance comes afterwards. What I mean by guidance is the guidance of God, as described by the Friend of God, Abraham: "Lo! I am going unto my Lord Who will guide me."
Ibn Ata AllahRead
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
Lin YutangRead
Anesthetized time; nothing moves and everything is at once.
Ken KeseyRead