Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes

They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.

The thought of Christmas overwhelms him. He no longer looks forward to the holiday; he wants only to be on the other side of the season. His impatience makes him feel that he is incontrovertibly, finally, an adult.

That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.

It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.

And yet she could not forgive herself. Even as an adult, she wished only that she could go back and change things: the ungainly things she’d worn, the insecurity she’d felt, all the innocent mistakes she made.

Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

It is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do.

You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.

I've never had Internet access. Actually, I have looked at things on other people's computers as a bystander. A few times in my life I've opened email accounts, twice actually, but it's something I don't want in my life right now.

She had listened to him, partly sympathetic, partly horrified. For it was one thing for her to reject her background, to be critical of her family's heritage, another to hear it from him.

In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil.

She has given birth to vagabonds. She is the keeper of all these names and numbers now, numbers she once knew by heart, numbers and addresses her children no longer remember.

Gogol is unaccustomed to this sort of talk at mealtimes, to the indulgent ritual of the lingering meal, and the pleasant aftermath of bottles and crumbs and empty glasses that clutter the table.

I've seen novels that have grown out of one story in a collection. But it hasn't occurred to me to take any of those stories and build on them. They seem very finished for me, so I don't feel like going back and dredging them up.

And yet he had loved her. A Bookish girl heedless of her beauty, unconscious of her effect. She'd been prepared to live her life alone but from the moment he'd known her he'd needed her.

It's easy to set a story anywhere if you get a good guidebook and get some basic street names, and some descriptions, but, for me, yes, I am indebted to my travels to India for several of the stories.

If I stop to think about fans, or best-selling, or not best-selling, or good reviews, or not-good reviews, it just becomes too much. It's like staring at the mirror all day.

On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl.

I don't know why, but the older I get the more interested I get in my parents' marriage. And it's interesting to be married yourself, too, because there is an inevitable comparison.

She watched his lips forming the words, at the same time she heard them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.

For that story, I took as my subject a young woman whom I got to know over the course of a couple of visits. I never saw her having any health problems - but I knew she wanted to be married.

He tries to peel the image from the sticky yellow backing, to show her the next time he sees her, but it clings stubbornly, refusing to detach cleanly from the past.

The knowledge of death seemed present in both sisters-it was something about the way they carried themselves, something that had broken too son and had not mended, marking them in spite of their lightheartedness.

My grandfather says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. "To travel without moving an inch.

On the screen I saw tanks rolling through dusty streets, and fallen buildings, and forests of unfamiliar trees into which East Pakistani refugees had fled, seeking safety over the Indian border.

The urge to convert experience into a group of words that are in a grammatical relation to one another is the most basic, ongoing impulse of my life.

When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.

I dream of writing a book like LOVERS some day. It is so spare but so rich. It is history made intimate, and a masterpiece of compression.

It interests me to imagine characters shifting from one situation and one location to another for whatever the circumstances may be.

...that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of secondhand pants, bought for fifty cents.

She supposed that all those years of loving a person who was dishonest had taught her a few things.

She is stunned that in this town there are no sidewalks to speak of, no streetlights, no public transportation, no stores for miles at at a time.

She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.

I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story.

The most compelling narrative, expressed in sentences with which I have no chemical reaction, or an adverse one, leaves me cold.

I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.

I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.

albert einstein quotes

We are all #humans and we all make #mistakes. We #hurt people even if we don't want to.

I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.

Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it.

Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being.

Isolation offered its own form of companionship

Relationships do not preclude issues of morality.

A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading.

A writer has to true to him or herself. Period. That’s it!

One hand, five homes. A lifetime in a fist.

War will bring the revolution; revolution will stop the war.

She has the gift of accepting her life.

With children the clock is reset. We forget what came before

Do what I will never do.

You remind me of everything that followed.

Sexy means loving someone you donot know.

The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.

Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying 'Listen to me'.

Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.

A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing

That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.