Mother Mary Comes To Me

by Arundhati Roy

most of us are a living, breathing soup of memory and imagination – and that we may not be the best arbiters of which is which.

The challenge for those of us who are not chosen, and instead watch love pass us by, is to learn from it, marvel at it, and not grow bitter and incapable of love ourselves.

The more our world fractures into dagger-shaped shards, the more we club each other to death with our genes, our gods, our flags, our languages, the colour of our skin, the purity of our roots, our histories both true and false

literature can join humans in a bond of quiet intimacy the way almost nothing else can.

I followed my instinct, which is the place from where all art and literature comes. It showed me the way.

I wanted everybody to be able to do the kind of work that funders wouldn’t easily fund. Because all of us realized that big money always tended to soften edges and support the status quo. Sometimes brazenly, and sometimes in sophisticated, round-about ways. Small money is always more subversive.

‘Beware of the person that sacrifices’. (Because they soon become insufferable and extract a price far greater than what they sacrificed.)