That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet. — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“My grandfather always says that's what books are for. To travel without moving an inch.” — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
Fiction is the only way I know a human being can inhabit the mind of another human being. — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“I think that a writer should observe the real world before imagining a non-existent one.” — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
I can't tell you exactly how I found it. It was just a process of writing a lot of stories and reading… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
My grandfather says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. "To travel… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
I've seen novels that have grown out of one story in a collection. But it hasn't occurred to me to take any… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
For years, I sort of would try to write a story that somehow fit the title. And I don't think it happened… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
“Fiction is an act of willfulness, a deliberate effort to reconcile, to rearrange, to reconstitute nothing short of reality itself. Even among… — 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… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace. Style and personality are irrelevant. They can be formal or… — Jhumpa Lahiri Copy Share Image
It was not in my nature to be an assertive person. I was used to looking to others for guidance, for influence,… — 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
Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying 'Listen to me'. — 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
