The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy

It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined.

This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.

“When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

Air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. The Big Things lurk unsaid inside.

is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.