Durga Chew-Bose

“The sheer, ensorcelled panic of feeling moved.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Watching her means paying attention.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

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

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Writing is a closed pistachio shell.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Isn’t it fun to read a sentence that races ahead of itself?”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Even when I was nothing, I was arriving.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“I’ve come around to the conciliatory quality of untruths.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“that makes me want to make stuff instead of make sense,”

— Durga Chew-Bose

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

— 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

“Then again, maybe that’s why I’m drawn to wonder: it pays no attention to priorities.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“The genius of the word is that it’s more of an expression than a word.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Writing is losing focus and winning it back, only to lose it once more.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Ray once said in an interview that he directs his films “in harmony with the rhythm of human breathing.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Who Is It” is a maze. It’s the sound of being stuck in one. It’s the pursuer feeling pursued.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

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

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Like the hurt we cause when we've been enduring too much in silence and have started to trust our own fixed claim…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“It’s an elbow propped on the edge of a table when you’re wrapping up an argument, or to signify you’re just getting…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“I find the plainness and economizing record of materials handled calming. Realistic yet not austere, because what corresponds—the words oil on canvas—has…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“A nook person finds the dog at the party; drinks wine from a mug; sits on the floor and braids carpet tassels…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Or when I meet someone new who loves a movie just as I’ve loved that movie; who speaks at such a clip…

— 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

“Those yet-to-access riches that I’d suspect are what tingle when a song’s lyrics eject me into outer space; assure me I can…

— 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

“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

“A woman carries her inner life—lugs it around or holds it in like fumes that both poison and bless her—while nourishing another’s…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Even when I’m caught off guard by a lathery shade of peach on the bottom corner of a painting at the Met,…

— 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

“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

“There's a type of inborn initiative that comes from having never been obligated to answer questions about one's name, or one's country…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“A remembrance of what’s impossible to remember. A sixth sense I’ve long guessed is special to those who are born with leftover…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“I don’t require much to feel far-removed; to impose my wanderings on what’s close. Because of this, my friend and I have…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“There’s might too in the incomplete. In feeling fractional. A failure to carry out is perhaps no failure at all, but rather…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“There's a recording of Nina Simone's "Ain't Got No", where Simone, after listing all the things she doesn't have - a home,…

— Durga Chew-Bose

“A distinguishing quality of the women I love, meaning, none of us are bothered by how infrequently we see one another. We…

— 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

“The best ideas outrun me. That’s why I write.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“These women who brilliantly source endings for takeoff.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Memory is trust open to doubt.”

— Durga Chew-Bose

“Other times, the art becomes a condition—incredibly fitting.”

— Durga Chew-Bose