Arundhati Roy Quotes

“This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.”

“Their beautiful mother’s mouth, Estha thought. Ammu’s mouth. That had kissed his hand through the barred train window. First class, on the Madras Mail to Madras. ‘Bye Estha, Godbless, Ammu’s mouth had said. Ammu’s trying-not-to-cry mouth. The last time he had seen her.”

“Rahel put on her sunglasses and looked back into the Play. Everything was Angry-colored. Sophie Mol, standing between Margaret Kochamma and Chacko, looked as though she ought to be slapped.”

“Rahel looked around her and saw she was in a Play. But she had only a small part. She was just the landscape. A flower perhaps. Or a tree. A face in the crowd. A Townspeople.”

“Neither question nor answer was meant as anything more than a polite preamble to conversation. Both [Rahel] and [Comrade Pillai] knew that there are things that can be forgotten. And things that cannot – that sit on dusty shelves like stuffed birds with baleful, sideways-staring eyes.”

“Then [Baby Kochamma] shuddered her schoolgirl shudder. That was when she said: How could she stand the smell? Haven’t you noticed? They have a particular smell, these Paravans.”

″ ‘My daughter, Sophie,’ Chacko said, and laughed a small, nervous laugh that was worried, in case Margaret Kochamma said ‘ex-daughter.’ But she didn’t.”

“It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined. Over the years, as the memory of Sophie Mol [...] slowly faded, the Loss of Sophie Mol grew robust and alive.”

“At Pappachi’s funeral, Mammachi cried and her contact lenses slid around in her eyes. Ammu told the twins that Mammachi was crying more because she was used to him than because she loved him. ”

“Looking back now, to Rahel it seemed as though this difficulty that their family had with classification ran much deeper than the jam-jelly question. Perhaps Ammu, Estha and she were the worst transgressors.”

“But it wasn’t just them. It was the others too. They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and jelly jelly.”

″ ‘Feeling hot, baby?’ the man like a knot asked Rahel kindly in Malayalam. Then, unkindly, ‘Ask your daddy to buy you an Air Condition!’ and he hooted with delight at his own wit and timing. Rahel smiled back at him, pleased to have Chacko mistaken for her father. Like a normal family.”

“That whole week Baby Kochamma eavesdropped relentlessly on the twins’ private conversations, and whenever she caught them speaking in Malayalam, she levied a small fine which was deducted at source. From their pocket money. She made them write lines – “impositions” she called them – I will always speak in English, I will always speak in English. A hundred times each.”

“Chacko was Mammachi’s only son. Her own grief grieved her. His devastated her.”

“Maybe they’re right,” Ammu’s whisper said. “Maybe a boy does need a Baba.”

“As for a divorced daughter – according to Baby Kochamma, she had no position anywhere at all. And as for a divorced daughter from a love marriage, well, words could not describe Baby Kochamma’s outrage. As for a divorced daughter from an intercommunity love marriage – Baby Kochamma chose to remain quiveringly silent on the subject.”

“Oh come on!” Chacko said. “You can’t dictate what she does with her own spit!” “Mind your own business,” Ammu snapped. “It brings back Memories,” Estha, in his wisdom, explained to Chacko.

“Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at Ammu. ‘D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.’ ”

“Only Rahel noticed Sophie Mol’s secret cartwheel in her coffin.”

″[Ammu] was surprised at the extent of her daughter’s physical ease with him. Surprised that her child seemed to have a sub-world that excluded her entirely.”