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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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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
Writing
Trying
Idea
Think
Write
Thinking
Given
Stories
Ideas
Message
Enough
Messages
Hard

More quotes by Jhumpa Lahiri

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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.
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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.
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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.
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Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying 'Listen to me'.
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Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.
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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.
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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
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With children the clock is reset. We forget what came before
Jhumpa Lahiri
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Do what I will never do.
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I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different.
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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 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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Isolation offered its own form of companionship
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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A bicultural upbringing is a rich but imperfect thing
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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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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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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A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading.
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