A Quote by Arundhati Roy

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things. — © Arundhati Roy
Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things.
Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things. And here we are with our crash helmets on, with concertina wire all around us.
Mother of Marvels, mysterious and tender Nature, why do we not live more in thee.
It's expected of novels that they should explain the world and create the illusion that things are ultimately logical and coherent. But that's not what I see around me. Often, events remain mysterious and unresolved, and our emotions reach no catharsis.
I think there's a false division people sometimes make in describing literary novels, where there are people who write systems novels, or novels of ideas, and there are people who write about emotional things in which the movement is character driven. But no good novels are divisible in that way.
Scientifically speaking, a butterfly is at least as mysterious as a superstring. When something ceases to be mysterious it ceases to be of absorbing interest to scientists. Almost all things scientists think and dream about are mysterious.
All things in my novels are real for me. Some western critics said that Garcia Marquez's novels are magic realism. However, I believe that Marquez must have experienced everything in his novels.
Maybe I've just read too many novels. In novels, alcoholics are always attractive and fuuny and charming and complex, like Sebastian Flyte or ABe North in Tender in the Night, and they're drinking because of a deep, unquenchable sadness of the soul, or the terrible legacy of the First World War, whereas I just get drunk because I'm thirsty, and I like the taste of lager.
The difference does not lie in the things that news does that novels do not do, but in the things that novels do that news cannot do. In other words, this basic technique of news - just one among many - is something a novel can use, but a novel can deploy a multitude of other techniques also. Novels are not bound by the rules of reportage. Far from it. They're predicated on delivering experience.
The Neapolitan novels have a lot of references to things outside, to things of the world, to culture, politics, the city of Naples. People have mentioned that Naples is like a character in the novels.
The tenderness between two people can turn the air tender, the room tender, time itself tender. As I step out of bed and slip on an oversize shirt, everything around me feels like it's the temperature of happiness.
What's hard to do is describe why you like something. Because ultimately, the reason things move people is very amorphous. You can be cerebral about things you hate, but most of the things you like tend to be very emotive.
I always love novels that open up a subject to me - like raising a window to a beautiful, mysterious world outside.
I really love horror novels, horror films, that are pointing at deeper ideas and thematic meaning. It's a way of thinking about films differently; that's what I think I like the most about it. I love the fact that's it's pointing at a more mysterious world - that the world is more of a mysterious place than we tend to let ourselves believe.
Every moment is incredibly unique and fresh, and when we drop into the moment, as meditation allows us to do, we learn how to truly taste this tender and mysterious life that we share together.
I think language is a system that we have devised to negotiate a series of more amorphous entities. It's a layer you can use to see where those things exist, but if you don't have anyone speaking anymore, those things are still there. The things that language stands for do not require humans, and in fact are often trampled down by humans.
I don't like to make strong statements. I want to write strong novels... I keep my deep, radical things for my novels.
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