Durga Chew-Bose

“If you share too much of yourself, you risk growing into someone who has nothing unacknowledged.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“I’ve heard rumors that writing can feel glamorous. But only glamorous, I’d guess, in the way a stretch limo might feel glamorous.…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“And besides, it feels more covert to have no evidence. To believe that something you’ve experienced will build on your extent—your extent…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“It’s imperative that writing consists of not living up to your own taste. Of leaving the world behind so you can hold…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Watching movies was, and still is, an opportunity for my heart to rush irregularly while the cost, for me, remains low.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Nook people know the words to a movie by heart but never say them out loud because anticipation is an asset. Because…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Writing is a closed pistachio shell.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“At any rate, isn’t it lovely to, once in a while, feel small in the presence of your friend? Awed. Fortunate to…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“I counted them and double-checked because extra-small things bring out the extra-small person in me who sometimes even triple-checks things; who still…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Memory fans out from imagination, and vice versa, and why not. Memory isn’t a well but an offshoot. It goes secretly. Comes…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Resurfacing is nonpareil. And splitting a sandwich with someone you’ve said maybe two words to all morning is idyllic.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“That spiked measure of awe—of oof—feels like a general slowing, even though what’s really taking place is nothing short of a general…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“The whole Esther Williams of it all. The ostrich ballet. Like pirouetting feather dusters; their paddle feet in fourth position.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“I’ve felt infinity too, late in my twenties, when I discovered a word in English I’d only ever known in Bengali. Or…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Smallness can make you feel extra porous. Extra ambitious. Like a small dog carrying an enormous branch clenched in its teeth, as…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Is my function to reach zero and leave nothing in the way of obstructing truth? Or to tender what’s still shapeless? The…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Memory is trust open to doubt.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Even when a thought springs fresh in my mind on the subway and solves an essay I’d just about abandoned. On the…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“of learning young that having a hunch is, like so many female facets, both misery and boon.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“To this day, watching a woman mindlessly tend to one thing while doing something else absorbs me. Like securing the backs of…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“She is all at once unused but oh, so used up. Or very used to. Why is it that when a woman…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“What I enjoy is this. Responding to an artist’s work as if it were a missive. A film can be a fling…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“The sheer, ensorcelled panic of feeling moved.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Nook people express appreciation in the moment by maintaining how much we will miss what is presently happening. Our priorities are spectacularly…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Because there is trust too, in feeling small.”

— Durga Chew-Bose