Quotes by Jhumpa Lahiri

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

“I think that a writer should observe the real world before imagining a non-existent one.”

“Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold.”

“Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.”

“Those who don't belong to any specific place can't, in fact, return anywhere.”

“In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.”

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

“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 b...”

“But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out of his dreams, its reality and its particular logic rendered meaningless in the light of day. The...”

“Will you remember this day, Gogol?" his father had asked, turning back to look at him, his hands pressed like earmuffs to either side of his head. "How long do I have to remember it?" Over the rise...”

“There was the focus of seeking pleasure, and the numbing effect, once they were finished, removing all specific thoughts from her brain. It ushered in the solid, dreamless sleep that otherwise elud...”

“On weekdays, as soon as she picked Bela from the bus stop and brought her home, she went straight into the kitchen, washing up the morning dishes she'd ignored, then getting dinner started. She mea...”

“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.”

“The blood of too many, dissolving the very stain.”

“Nor was her love for Udayan recognizable or intact. Anger was always mounted to it, zigzagging through her like some helplessly mating pair of insects. Anger at him for dying when he might have liv...”

“It's easier to surrender to confinement.”

“My grandfather always 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.”

“Books come to stand for various episodes in our lives, for certain idealisms, follies of belief, moments of love. Along the way they accumulate our marks, our stains, our innocent abuses—they come ...”

“Surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as p...”

“I'm amazed at how fast the interest has grown in writing in English by writers of South Asian origin, whether they're living in India, living in South Asia, or they are expatriate writers living he...”