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The God of Small Things QUOTES

The God of Small Things QUOTES

1 " But what was there to say?

Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.

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

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

2 " It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do. "

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

3 " The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunged out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. They way she used Kipling to love her children before putting them to bed: We be of one blood, though and I. Her goodnight kiss. The way she held their faces steady with one hand (squashed-cheeked, fish-mouthed) while she parted and combed their hair with the other. The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied.

She was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double. "

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

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

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

5 " It turned out to be a war which, unfortunately for Comrade Pillai, would end almost before it began. Victory was gifted to him wrapped and beribboned, on a silver tray. Only then, when it was too late, and Paradise Pickles slumped softly to the floor without so much as a murmur or even the pretense of resistance, did Comrade Pillai realize that what he really needed was the process of war more than the outcome of victory. War could have been the stallion that he rode, part of, if not all, the way to the Legislative Assembly, whereas victory left him no better off than when he started out.

He broke the eggs but burned the omelette. "

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

6 " They sensed somehow that she lived in the prenumbral shadows between two worlds, just beyond the grasp of their power. That a woman that they had already damned, now had little left to lose, and could therefore be dangerous. So on the days that the radio played Ammu's songs, people avoided her, making little loops around her, because everybody agreed that it was best to just Let Her Be. "

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

7 " She discovered that underneath the aspect of the Rumpled Porcupine, a tortured Marxist was at war with an impossible, incurable Romantic - who forgot the candles, who broke the wine glasses, who forgot the ring. Who made love to her with a passion that took her breath away. She had always thought of herself as a somewhat uninteresting, thick-waisted, thick ankled girl. Not bad-looking. Not special. But when she was with Chacko, old limits were pushed back. Horizons expanded.
She had never before met a man who spoke of the workd - of what it was, and how it came to be, or what he thought would become of it - in the way in which other men she knew discussed their jobs, their friends or their weekends at the beach.
Being with Chacko made Margaret Kochamma feel as though her soul had escaped from the narrow confines of her island country, into the vast extravagant spaces of his. He made her feel as though the world belonged to them - as though it lay before thm like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined. "

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

8 " 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. "

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

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

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

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

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

11 " 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 Roy , The God of Small Things

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

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

13 " At least not until the Terror took hold of him. Not until he saw, night after night, a little boat being rowed across the river. Not until he saw it return at dawn. Not until he saw what his Untouchable son had touched. More than touched.
Enter.
Loved. "

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

14 " The twins were too young to know that these were only history’s henchmen. Sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws. 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. "

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

15 " It wasn't what lay at the end of her road that frightened Ammu as much as the nature of the road itself. No milestones marked its progress. No trees grew along it. No dappled shadows shaded it. No mists rolled over it. No birds circled it. No twists, no turns or hairpin bends obscured even momentarily, her clear view of the end. This filled Ammu with an awful dread, because she was not the kind of woman who wanted her future told. She dreaded it too much. So if she were granted one small wish perhaps it would have been Not to Know, Not to know what each day had in store for her. Not to know where she might be, next month, next year. Ten years on. Not to know which way her road might turn and what lay beyond the bend. "

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

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

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

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

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

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

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

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

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things

20 " Ridges of muscle on his stomach rose under his skin like divisions on a slab of chocolate. He held her close by the light of an oil lamp, and he shone as though he had been polished with a high-wax body polish. "

― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things