Quotes By Author - Jhumpa Lahiri

A woman who had fallen out of love with her life

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.

And yet it felt like an invasion of the part of his body, the physical sense that was most precious: something that betrayed him and also refused to abandon him.

And yet my lexicon develops without logic, in a darting, fleeting manner. The words appear, accompany me for a while, then, often without warning, abandon me.

As strange as it seemed, I knew in my heart that one day her death would affect me, and stranger still, that mine would affect her.

Because in the end to learn a language, to feel connected to it, you have to have a dialogue, however childlike, however imperfect.

Books are the best means—private, discreet, reliable—of overcoming reality.

Do what I will never do.

Every language belongs to a specific place. It can migrate, it can spread. But usually it’s tied to a geographical territory, a country. Italian

Everything in Bela's life has been a reaction. I am who I am, she would say, I live as I do because of you.

Everything is there

For Gogol Ganguli- The man who gave you his name, from the man who gave you your name.

Given that she barely saw her father, given that she continued to measure out her contact with him, whether to deny herself or to deny him, she could not be sure.

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.

He felt the chill of her secrecy, numbing him, like a poison spreading quickly through his veins.

He learned not to mind the silences.

He longed for sleep, but it would not immerse him; that night the waters he sought for his repose were deep enough to wade in, but not to swim.

He saw that his mother was dwelling in an alternate time, a more bearable reality.

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.

He waited for chaotic games to end, for shouts to subside. His favorite moments were when he was alone, or felt alone. Lying in bed in the morning, watching sunlight flickering like a restless bird on the wall.

How many times does a person write his name in a lifetime—a million? Two million?

I don't know, he said, handing her the ticket. He'd been standing there all the while on the sidewalk, waiting for her. Waiting, until they were in the darkness of the theatre, to take her hand.

I owed the greater apology, but at the same time I knew that was done was done, that no matter what I said now I would never be able to make it right.

I returned to my existence, the existence I had chosen instead of you.

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

In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.

In so many ways, his family’s life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another.

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

In their silence they continued both to protect me and to punish me. The memory of that night was now the only tie between us, eclipsing everything else.

In those six weeks I regarded her arrival as I would the arrival of a coming month, or season - something inevitable, but meaningless at the same time.

Isolation offered its own form of companionship

It was only then, raising my water glass in his name, that I knew what it meant to miss someone who was so many miles and hours away, just as he had missed his wife and daughters for so many months.

It's easier to surrender to confinement.

Learning was an act of rediscovery, knowledge a form of remembering.

Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity of from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.

Most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear.

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

My grandfather always says that's what books are for. To travel without moving an inch.

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.

No more bells ringing in the middle of the afternoon demolishing the rest of the day. No more waiting for the situation to change.

Odd things made him love her.

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.

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

Only then, forced at six months to confront his destiny, does he begin to cry.

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

People are starving, and this is their solution, he eventually said. They turn victims into criminals. They aim guns at people who can't shoot back.

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.

Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated.

Plato says the purpose of philosophy is to teach us how to die.

Reading in another language implies a perpetual state of growth, of possibility. I

Remember it always. Remember that you and I made this journey and went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.

Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.

Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.

Sexy means loving someone you do not know.

She had denied herself the pleasure of openly sharing life with the person she loved.

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.

She had preferred being on the plane, detached from the earth, the illusion of sitting still.

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.

She has the gift of accepting her life.

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.

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

She was unprepared for the landscape to be so altered. For there to be no trace of that evening, forty autumns ago.

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.

So that she began to see herself more clearly, as a thin film of dust was wiped from a sheet of glass.

Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.

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.

That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.

The cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now, not to improve her but to define her somehow.

The future haunted but kept her alive; it remained her sustenance and also her predator.

The imperfection became a mark of distinction about their home. Something visitors noticed, the first family anecdote that was told.

The nickname had irritated and pleased her at the same time. It made her feel foolish, but she was aware that in renaming her he had claimed her somehow, already made her his own.

The notice informed them that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M.

There was the anxiety that one day would not follow the next, combined with the certainty that it would.

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 eluded her.

They still feel somehow in transit, still disconnected from their lives, bound up in an alternate schedule, an intimacy only the four of them would share.

They tolerate my mistakes. They correct me, they encourage me, they provide the words I lack. They speak clearly, patiently. Just like parents with their children. The

To Travel without moving an inch.

Together Never Believe

Too much information, and yet, in her case, not enough. In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.

War Will War will bring the revolution; revolution will stop the war,

What she’d done for him, because he’d asked.

What was stored in memory was distinct from what was deliberately remembered, Augustine said.

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

With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether.

You remind me of everything that followed.