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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
Story
Read
Makes
Next
Criterion
Stories
Criteria
Sentence
Drawn
Sentences

More quotes by Jhumpa Lahiri

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You remind me of everything that followed.
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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A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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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.
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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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their hand-holding on the street and lying on top of each other on the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing
Jhumpa Lahiri
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In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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Isolation offered its own form of companionship
Jhumpa Lahiri
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With children the clock is reset. We forget what came before
Jhumpa Lahiri
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I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.
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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He owned an expensive camera that required thought before you pressed the shutter, and I quickly became his favorite subject, round-faced, missing teeth, my thick bangs in need of a trim. They are still the pictures of myself I like best, for they convey that confidence of youth I no longer possess, especially in front of a camera.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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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.
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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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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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