I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel tha… - Arundhati Roy

How carelessly imperial power vivisected ancient civilizations. Palestine and Kashmir are imperial Britain's festering,
blood-drenched gifts to the modem world. Both are fault lines in the raging international conicts of today.

Normality in our part of the world is a bit like a boiled egg: its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence. It is our constant anxiety about that violence, our memory of its past labours and our dread of its future manifestations, that lays down the rules for how a people as complex and as diverse as we continue to coexist – continue to live together, tolerate each other and, from time to time, murder one another. As long as the centre holds, as long as the yolk doesn’t run, we’ll be fine. In moments of crisis it helps to take the long view. (p154-5)

I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.