Meena Kandasamy

"Love is not blind, it just looks in the wrong places."

"Shame is not in the beatings, not in the rape. Shame is in being asked to stand judgment."

"A memoir for me means a person’s life story; if I was going to write my actual life story, I would condense this entire marriage into a footnote."

"Who does the novel belong to? I am writing about a different reality, so I need to shape it to fit my reality. You don’t want to do the same. You don’t want to do the done thing. To take a risk, you still need to be absolutely on the margins. I am doing what I want to do."

"I have been in an abusive marriage. Violence can come from love, from a very intimate person. Violence can come from all sorts of crazy situations. What are you going to do? You have to deal with it when it strikes."

"Sometimes I think that what I do must be either idiotic and naïve or courageous. I don’t know which. If there was no threat of violence, that is what you would do. This threat of violence shouldn’t dictate what you are going to write or hinder you in any manner."

"The literary world must take a stand [to stop Bloomsbury publishing the book]. This is not about cancel culture. This is about defending literature from fascism. This is about standing up against religious divide, hate speech, islamophobia and false history."