Being with him made her feel as though her soul had escaped from the narrow confines of her island country into the vast, extravagant spaces of his. He made her feel as though the world belonged to them- as though it lay before them like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined.

States have invested themselves with the right to legitimise violence - so who gets criminalised and delegitimised? Only - or well that's excessive - usually, the resistance.

To stay quiet is as political an act as speaking out.

Novels are such mysterious and amorphous and tender things. And here we are with our crash helmets on, with concertina wire all around us.

I am very conscious that, from the time of The God of Small Things was published 10 years ago, we are in a different world ... which needs to be written about differently, and I really very much want to do that.

Your enemies are always manufactured to suit your purpose, right? How can you have a good enemy? You have to have an utterly evil enemy - and then the evilness has to progress.

Poverty is a crime and the poor are terrorists