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
But remember that if the struggle were to resort to violence, it will lose vision, beauty and imagination. Most dangerous of all, it will marginalize and eventually victimize women. And a political struggle that does not have women at the heart of it, above it, below it, and within it is no struggle at all.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of inclusivity in political struggles, particularly focusing on the involvement of women.
Arundhati Roy asserts that any political struggle that resorts to violence will undermine its core values of vision, beauty, and imagination, and further, will harm women by marginalizing their voices. She insists that a genuine struggle must center women in both leadership and participation roles, as their experiences and perspectives are vital to creating a just and equitable movement.
Themes
WomenPolitical StruggleViolenceInclusivityMarginalizationLeadership
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech at a women's rights rally to emphasize the need for inclusivity in activism.
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.
Arundhati RoyRead
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.
Arundhati RoyRead
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.
Arundhati RoyRead
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.
Arundhati RoyRead
Similar quotes
To think that our political organisation is immutable is the best way to hand the country over to the extremes.
Emmanuel MacronRead
We need to mobilise our structures and our supporters to oppose state capture and corruption in whatever form it takes.
Cyril RamaphosaRead
[The Federal Convention] is really an assembly of demigods.
Thomas JeffersonRead
Wealthy individuals bought themselves a radical right party, believing - correctly - that it would cut their taxes and remove regulations, but failed to realize that eventually the craziness would take on a life of its own, and that the monster they created would turn on its creators as well as the little people.
Paul KrugmanRead
There does not have to be trade-off between growth and social protection. A democracy does not mean much if it doesn't respond to the needs and will of its people.
Michelle BacheletRead
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies.
Noam ChomskyRead