Arundhati Roy

She writes beautifully. I am a true believer that the things you bring into your life should be right for that time. God of Small Things is right for me right now.

I want to share some of her words because they make sense and have an innocence about them; an innocence that carries wisdom on it's shoulders. William Blake would probably disagree.


"Smells, like music, hold memory. She breathed deep and bottled it up for posterity."

"Memory was that woman on the train. Insane in the way she sifted through dark things in a closet and emerged with the most unlikely ones -- a fleeting look, a feeling. The smell of smoke. A mother's marble eyes. Quite sane in the way she left huge tracts of darkness veiled. Unremembered."

"She hadn't learned to control her Hopes yet."

"Our dreams have been doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter." (Uncle talking to niece and nephew about being 'prisoners' of war)

"She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes."

[my favorite]
"Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of burned house -- the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture -- must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for."


Ideas: A viable dying age. A Design for Life. Love Laws.

It's a really good book so far and I suggest it to anyone who is looking for a book (all six of you who read this). I guess it is hard to represent her skill with excerpts taken out of context, but really, trust me. It'll make you smile at memories you had forgotten about.


"And the things you can't remember tells the things you can't forget that history puts a saint in every dream." -Tom Waits