Arundhati Roy Quotes

Progress everywhere today does seem to come so very heavily disguised as Chaos.

The interval between the decay of the old and the formation and establishment of the new constitutes a period of transition which must always necessarily be one of uncertainty, confusion, error, and wild and fierce fanaticism.

I think frankly when it comes to chaos you ain't seen nothing yet.

Nothing ever stays the same for very long in my life.

Nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has made night out of noonday, hiding the bright sunlight, and... fear has come upon mankind. After this, men can believe anything, expect anything. Don't any of you be surprised in future if land beasts change places with dolphins and go to live in their salty pastures, and get to like the sounding waves of the sea more than the land, while the dolphins prefer the mountains.

All great changes are preceded by chaos.

There's chaos out there, and chaos means opportunity.

Disenchantment, whether it is a minor disappointment or a major shock, is the signal that things are moving into transition in our lives.

I frequently hear our present period described as uncertain, confused, chaotic.

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

Any radical change or trauma always makes for interesting subject matter, but then all stories deal, to some extent, with the disjuncture between past and present.

I've never seen such a goddamned mess in my life.

Look for me in the whirlwind.

It is not new and it is not order.

I tell you that the new age has dawned, the age of holy anarchy.

A revolution resembles the death of a fading star, an exhilarating Technicolor explosion that gives way not to an ordered new galaxy but to a nebula, a formless cloud of shifting energy.

Trying to cause chaos - I think that's the way I create change.

I used to be chaotic and unkempt.

This is a catastrophic universe, always; and subject to hidden reversals, upheavals, changes, cataclysms, with joy never anything but the song of substance under pressure forced into new forms and shapes.

The world is out of order. It's been broken since you came.

I unsettle all things.

Just keep playing, mastering as you do the step Into disorder this one meant. Don't you see It's all we can do? Meanwhile, great fires Arise, as of haystacks aflame. The dial has been set And that's ominous, but all your graciousness in living Conspires with it, now that this is our home: A place to be from, and have people ask about.

Of course it’s the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they’re happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly—all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.