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
I would never, ever use a novel to do thinly disguised political information dissemination. For me, all these experiences, they sat in me, and they got broken down into my body, and I sweated it out. It's not because I want to talk about 'issues.' For me, a novel is a way of seeing the world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that novels should not solely serve as tools for political messages, but rather as personal expressions and perspectives on the world.
Arundhati Roy emphasizes that for her, writing a novel is not just a means to convey political messages or address social issues; instead, it is an intimate process of expressing one’s own worldview shaped by personal experiences. The act of writing transforms her lived experiences, which are deeply felt and internalized, into a literary form that allows readers to engage with the complexities of life, encouraging them to see the world through her eyes rather than merely being vehicles for political discourse.
Themes
NovelPoliticsWorldviewExperiencesWriting
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on the role of literature in society, this quote can be used to highlight how novels can reflect personal truths instead of just political narratives.
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.
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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.
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
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