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

Jhumpa Lahiri

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Jhumpa Lahiri
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: July 11
Academic
Actor
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Jūmpā Lāhīrī
Nilanjana Svadeshna Lahiri
Nilanjana Sudeshna Lahiri
Jhumba Lahiri
Stories
Criteria
Sentence
Drawn
Sentences
Story
Read
Makes
Next
Criterion

More quotes by Jhumpa Lahiri

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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking of her so often, of missing her. But she knew that this was an illusion, a mirage, and that the distance between them was now infinite, unyielding.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. Blindly planning for it, envisioning things that weren't the case. This was the working of the will. This was what gave the world purpose and direction. Not what was there but what was not.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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That's what books are for... to travel without moving an inch.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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My parents had an arranged marriage, as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one way and my mother had a different one, and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it, and I will continue to write about it.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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Isolation offered its own form of companionship
Jhumpa Lahiri
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You remind me of everything that followed.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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...that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of secondhand pants, bought for fifty cents.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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It interests me to imagine characters shifting from one situation and one location to another for whatever the circumstances may be.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri