Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Thinking
Mirrors
Like
Fans
Becomes
Stop
Best
Reviews
Much
Staring
Good
Mirror
Think
Selling

More quotes by Jhumpa Lahiri

Image
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
Image
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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Image
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
Image
Do what I will never do.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Each day she removes a small portion of the unwanted things in people's lives, though all of it, she thinks, was previously wanted, once useful. She feels the sun scorching the back of her neck. The heat is at its worst now, the rains still a few months away. The task satisfies her. It passes the time.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Image
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
Image
You remind me of everything that followed.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Image
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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Image
The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace. Style and personality are irrelevant. They can be formal or casual. They can be tall or short or fat or thin. They can obey the rules or break them. But they need to contain a charge. A live current, which shocks and illuminates.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Image
Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Image
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
Image
I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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