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41 " The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke. "
― Arundhati Roy , The God of Small Things
42 " He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair. "
43 " There is a war that makes us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves. "
44 " If he touched her, he couldn't talk to her, if he loved her he couldn't leave, if he spoke he couldn't listen, if he fought he couldn't win. "
45 " Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to. "
46 " Some things come with their own punishments. "
47 " 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. "
48 " Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace Worse Things kept happening "
49 " Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don't fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning. "
50 " It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that is purloined. "
51 " It was a time when the unthinkable became the thinkable and the impossible really happened "
52 " Being with him made her 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 them like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined. "
53 " There are things that you can't do - like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart. "
54 " Her grief grieved her. His devastated her. "
55 " Insanity hovered close at hand, like an eager waiter at an expensive restaurant. "
56 " And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature. "
57 " People always loved best what they identified most with. "
58 " Smells, like music, hold memories. She breathed deep, and bottled it up for posterity. "
59 " And when we look in through the windows, all we see are shadows. And when we try and listen, all we hear is a whispering. And we cannot understand the whispering, because our minds have been invaded by a war. A war that we have both won and lost. The very worst sort of war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that has made us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves. "
60 " If you are happy in a dream, Ammu, does that count? Estha asked. "Does what count?" "The happiness does it count?". She knew exactly what he meant, her son with his spoiled puff. Because the truth is, that only what counts, counts....."If you eat fish in a dream, does it count?" Does it mean you've eaten fish? "