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

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
Mean
Leap
Writing
Listening
Listen
Taking
Writer
Inspiration
Saying
Means
Willfulness

More quotes by Jhumpa Lahiri

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A writer has to true to him or herself. Period. That’s it!
Jhumpa Lahiri
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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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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.
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Try to remember it always, he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting. Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.
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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Relationships do not preclude issues of morality.
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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...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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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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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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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing
Jhumpa Lahiri
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With children the clock is reset. We forget what came before
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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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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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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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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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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.
Jhumpa Lahiri