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
Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Nationalism can lead to violent consequences, including genocide, as it often manipulates people's identities and loyalties.
In this quote, Arundhati Roy critiques nationalism, suggesting that it plays a significant role in the atrocities of the twentieth century, such as genocide. She points out that flags, symbols of national identity, are used to manipulate people's thoughts and ultimately serve as markers for the deaths caused by this extreme form of loyalty, thus highlighting the devastating human cost of such ideologies.
Themes
NationalismGenocideFlagsIdentityManipulation
In practice
Example use cases
In a history class discussing the impact of nationalism on world events.
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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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.
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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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