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
Years of imprisoning and beheading writers never succeeded in shutting them out. However, placing them in the heart of a market and rewarding them with a lot of commercial success, has.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Censorship fails to silence writers, but commercial success can distract and undermine their true voice.
In this quote, Arundhati Roy suggests that while oppressive measures like imprisonment and execution attempt to silence writers, true silencing occurs when they are co-opted by the market and commercial success, leading them away from their authentic expression. This highlights the dangers of commercialization in art and literature, where the pursuit of profit can overshadow meaningful critique and genuine storytelling.
Themes
WritersCensorshipCommercializationSuccessExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech advocating for artistic freedom, one might reference this quote to emphasize how capitalism affects genuine creativity.
More from Arundhati Roy
All quotes βWhen 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination.
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