Arundhati Roy, The God Of Small Things Quotes

That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.

If you're happy in a dream, does that count?

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

Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.

Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-colored puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-colored minds.

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.

He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn't kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn't see her. If he saw her, he couldn't feel her.

His gratitude widened his smile and bent his back.

There are things that can be forgotten. And things that cannot - that sit on dusty shelves like stuffed birds with baleful, sideways staring eyes.

And once again, only the Small Things were said. The Big Things lurked unsaid inside.

Ammu's tears made everything that had so far seemed unreal, real.

They only asked for punishments that fitted their crimes. Not ones that came like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. Not ones you spent your whole life in, wandering through its maze of shelves.

She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims...

She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for [him] was actually a tentative, timorous, acceptance of herself.

Her collarbones like wings that spread from the base of her throat to the ends of her shoulders. A bird held down by skin.

Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.

In a determined reversal of her inherent nature, Kochu Maria now, as a policy, hardly ever believed anything that anybody said.

Certainly no beast has essayed the boundless, infinitely inventive art of human hatred. No beast can match its range and power.

How history negotiates its terms and collects its dues from those who break its laws.

To understand history, ' Chacko said, 'we have to go inside and listen to what they're saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells.