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
Ammu loved her children (of course), but their wide-eyed vulnerability and their willingness to love people who didn't really love them exasperated her and sometimes made her want to hurt them-- just as an education, a precaution.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Ammu's love for her children is complicated by her concern for their innocence and vulnerability.
In this quote, Arundhati Roy explores the complex emotions of a mother who loves her children deeply but feels frustrated by their naivety and their capacity to love unconditionally, even those who do not reciprocate that love. It highlights the protective instincts of a parent, who may feel a desire to shield their children from potential heartbreak, reflecting a mixture of love, fear, and the desire to prepare them for a harsher reality.
Themes
LoveChildrenVulnerabilityParentingHeartbreak
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about the challenges of parenting.
More from Arundhati Roy
All quotes →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.
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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.
Arundhati RoyRead
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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