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Meaning
The quote says that a worthwhile life is one lived fully in the present, with awareness and vitality. It contrasts being truly alive with merely existing, and suggests that death should come only at the end of life, not before through a lack of engagement.
When It Was Said
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Who It Was Said To
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Historical Context
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Source
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Original Language & Translation
Originally said in English.
Did They Really Say It?
Listed as attributed, but no source was found on Wikiquote.
Did You Know?
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About Arundhati Roy
Indian author and political activist
Arundhati Roy is an Indian author and political activist. She is best known for her novel The God of Small Things, published in 1997, which won the Booker Prize for Fiction that year and became the biggest-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. Her work and public life have also been shaped by her activism on human rights and environmental issues. In 2024, she won the PEN Pinter Prize from English PEN, and she chose the imprisoned British-Egyptian writer and activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah as the Writer of Courage with whom to share the award.
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Books by Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things
1997
Field Notes on Democracy
2010
Things that can and cannot be said
2016
The End of Imagination
2019
Walking with the comrades
2012