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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the internal conflicts and struggles caused by external influences, emphasizing the complexity of victory and defeat in personal battles.
In this poignant quote by Arundhati Roy, the author explores the idea of perception versus reality, where the shadows seen through windows symbolize the distorted views shaped by external battles, possibly societal or psychological. The whispering represents the confusion that arises from these experiences, illustrating how the war not only evolves us into something we may admire but also leads to self-contempt, revealing the paradox of triumph where one emerges victorious yet fundamentally changed and troubled.
Themes
ConflictSelfPerceptionWarIdentityVictory
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech on mental health awareness to highlight the challenges of internal battles.
More from Arundhati Roy
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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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