“The future haunted but kept her alive; it remained her sustenance and also her predator.” — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold.” — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“She wished the days and months ahead of her would end. But the rest of her life continued to present itself, time… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
He tries to peel the image from the sticky yellow backing, to show her the next time he sees her, but it… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
He told me he was working as an interpreter in a doctor's office in Brookline, Massachusetts, where I was living at the… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
It is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“She wanted to shut her eyes to it. She wished the days and months ahead of her would end. But the rest… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. Blindly planning for it, envisioning things that… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“Relax,” Edith says. “The perfect name will come to you in time.” Which is when Gogol announces, “There’s no such thing.” “No… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
Winning the Pulitzer is wonderful and it's an honor and I feel so humbled and so grateful, but I think that I'll… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“The Greeks had had no clear notion of it. For them the future had been indeterminable. In Aristotle’s teaching, a man could… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
There were times Ruma felt closer to her mother in death than she had in life, an intimacy born simply of thinking… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“The next time she visits her father she’ll speak to him in English. Were her mother ever to stand before her, even… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years.… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“Time flowed for Bela in the opposite direction. The day after yesterday, she sometimes said. Pronounced slightly differently, Bela’s name, the name… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“Did you have to try for a while?” He thought it a bold question, coming from a stranger. But he was honest… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“Though no longer pregnant, she continues, at times, to mix Rice Krispies and peanuts and onions in a bowl. For being a… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
The sky was different, without color, taut and unforgiving. But the water was the most unforgiving thing, nearly black at times, cold… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“She turns on her laptop, raises her spectacles to her face. She reads the day’s headlines. But they might be from any… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“At four Bela was developing a memory. The word yesterday entered her vocabulary, though its meaning was elastic, synonymous with whatever was… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
This story is based on a gentleman who indeed did... used to come to my parents' house in 1971 from Bangladesh. He… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“It was the English word she used. It was in English that the past was unilateral; in Bengali, the word for yesterday,… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
I would not send a first story anywhere. I would give myself time to write a number of stories. — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
She is stunned that in this town there are no sidewalks to speak of, no streetlights, no public transportation, no stores for… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“He saw that his mother was dwelling in an alternate time, a more bearable reality.” — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“It had ended bitterly; though at the time he could never come up with a reason not to, he could not bring… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“Again, as it was after Udayan’s death, there was an acute awareness of time, of the future looming, accelerating. The baby’s lifetime,… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
And wasn't it terrible, how much he looked forward to those moments, so much so that sometimes even a ride by himself… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“Assured by his grades and his apparent indifference to girls, his parents don't suspect Gogol of being, in his own fumbling way, an American… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
...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 Copy Share 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… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
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… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“This tradition doesn't exist for Bengalis, naming a son after father or grandfather, a daughter after mother or grandmother. This sign of respect in… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different. — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“Ashoke suspects that Mrs. Jones (the secretary at his new job as a professor) ...is about his own mother's age. Mrs. Jones leads a… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share 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… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
The sky was different, without color, taut and unforgiving. But the water was the most unforgiving thing, nearly black at times, cold enough, I… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“In those six weeks I regarded her arrival as I would the arrival of a coming month, or season - something inevitable, but meaningless… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share 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… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“Writing down call numbers with short pencils, searching up and down aisles that would turn dark when the timers on the lights expired. She… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
