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This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.
Arundhati Roy
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Families often understand each other's pain deeply, but this can lead to hurtful experiences.

In this quote, Arundhati Roy reflects on the complexities of family relationships, suggesting that family members often have an intimate knowledge of each other's vulnerabilities. This deep understanding can foster a sense of connection, but it also has the potential to cause emotional pain as they may unintentionally exploit this knowledge, similar to how a doctor might know exactly where to inflict discomfort in order to diagnose or treat.

Themes

FamilyPainRelationshipsHurtUnderstanding

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be shared during a family gathering to spark discussions about family dynamics.

More from Arundhati Roy

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.
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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.
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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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