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80e79dc
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She was like that, excited and delighted by little things, crossing her fingers before any remotely unpredictable event, like tasting a new flavor of ice cream, or dropping a letter in a mailbox. It was a quality he did not understand. It made him feel stupid, as if the world contained hidden wonders he could not anticipate, or see. He looked at her face, which, it occurred to him, had not grown out of its girlhood, the eyes untroubled, the..
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interpreter-of-maladies
this-blessed-house
jhumpa-lahiri
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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9cfb20f
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He tries to peel the image from the sticky yellow backing, to show her the next time he sees her, but it clings stubbornly, refusing to detach cleanly from the past.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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e19c278
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With the birth of Akash, in his sudden, perfect presence, Ruma had felt awe for the first time in her life. He still had the power to stagger her at times--simply the fact that he was breathing, that all his organs were in their proper places, that blood flowed quietly and effectively through his small, sturdy limbs. He was her flesh and blood, her mother had told her in the hospital the day Akash was born. Only the words her mother used we..
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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79d9369
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The sky was different, without color, taut and unforgiving. But the water was the most unforgiving thing, nearly black at times, cold enough, I knew, to kill me, violent enough to break me apart. The waves were immense, battering rocky beaches without sand. The farther I went, the more desolate it became, more than any place I'd been, but for this very reason the landscape drew me, claimed me as nothing had in a long time.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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e97b669
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Books are the best means--private, discreet, reliable--of overcoming reality.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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ed95cbf
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The future haunted but kept her alive; it remained her sustenance and also her predator.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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d041d74
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learning was an act of rediscovery, knowledge a form of remembering.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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cf2e512
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It was only then, raising my water glass in his name, that I knew what it meant to miss someone who was so many miles and hours away, just as he had missed his wife and daughters for so many months.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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ea1e422
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Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold.
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fate
future
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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2d3fe0d
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The knowledge of death seemed present in both sisters--it was something about the way they carried themselves, something that had broken too soon and had not mended, marking them in spite of their lightheartedness.
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sisterhood
sisters
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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c767d7f
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human being could be alive for years and years, thinking and breathing and eating, full of a million worries and feelings and thoughts, taking up space in the world, and then, in an instant, become absent, invisible.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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5e15827
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She has given birth to vagabonds. She is the keeper of all these names and numbers now, numbers she once knew by heart, numbers and addresses her children no longer remember.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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81e74b4
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She had listened to him, partly sympathetic, partly horrified. For it was one thing for her to reject her background, to be critical of her family's heritage, another to hear it from him.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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092c57b
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that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of secondhand pants, bought for fifty cents.
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money
life
jhumpa-lahiri
the-namesake
american
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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b4000b8
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What does a word mean? And a life? In the end, it seems to me, the same thing. Just as a word can have many dimensions, many nuances, great complexity, so, too, can a person, a life. Language is the mirror, the principal metaphor. Because ultimately the meaning of a word, like that of a person, is boundless, ineffable.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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4636de9
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Because in the end to learn a language, to feel connected to it, you have to have a dialogue, however childlike, however imperfect.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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f4a3da2
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He learned not to mind the silences.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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806285b
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It was the English word she used. It was in English that the past was unilateral; in Bengali, the word for yesterday, kal, was also the word for tomorrow. In Bengali one needed an adjective, or relied on the tense of a verb, to distinguish what had already happened from what would be.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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82f7d32
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I returned to my existence, the existence I had chosen instead of you.
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existence
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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f055bfd
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As strange as it seemed, I knew in my heart that one day her death would affect me, and stranger still, that mine would affect her.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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3c4b5f5
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A foreign language can signify a total separation. It can represent, even today, the ferocity of our ignorance. To write in a new language, to penetrate its heart, no technology helps. You can't accelerate the process, you can't abbreviate it. The
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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bae59a7
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My grandfather always says that's what books are for. To travel without moving an inch.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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e5fffc6
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I had never traveled alone before and I discovered that I liked it. No one in the world knew where I was, no one had the ability to reach me. It was like being dead, my escape allowing me to taste that tremendous power my mother possessed forever.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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8584f52
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I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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4da7e81
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Nor was her love for Udayan recognizable or intact. Anger was always mounted to it, zigzagging through her like some helplessly mating pair of insects. Anger at him for dying when he might have lived. For bringing her happiness, and then taking it away. For trusting her, only to betray her. For believing in sacrifice, only to be so selfish in the end.
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selfishness
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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adf5ba1
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Everything in Bela's life has been a reaction. I am who I am, she would say, I live as I do because of you.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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7f406a3
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Without a single grandparent or parent or uncle or aunt at her side, the baby's birth, like most everything else in America, feels somehow haphazard, only half true. As she strokes and suckles and studies her son, she can't help but pity him. She has never known of a person entering the world so alone, so deprived.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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9672c6a
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She is stunned that in this town there are no sidewalks to speak of, no streetlights, no public transportation, no stores for miles at at a time.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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da632b4
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I just wanted to go home, to the language in which I was known, and loved.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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e1ef648
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I think that the power of art is the power to wake us up, strike us to our depths, change us. What are we searching for when we read a novel, see a film, listen to a piece of music? We are searching, through a work of art, for something that alters us, that we weren't aware of before. We want to transform ourselves, just as Ovid's masterwork transformed me.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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61314ad
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Most of all I remember the three of them operating during that time as if they were a single person, sharing a single meal, a single body, a single silence, and a single fear.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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b736db8
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Gogol is unaccustomed to this sort of talk at mealtimes, to the indulgent ritual of the lingering meal, and the pleasant aftermath of bottles and crumbs and empty glasses that clutter the table.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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3e1f463
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In the days that follow, he begins to remember things about Moushumi, images that come to him without warning while he is sitting at his desk at work, or during a meeting, or drifting off to sleep, or standing in the mornings under the shower. They are scenes he has carried within him, buried but intact, scenes he has never thought about or had reason to conjure up until now.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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bc9b4a8
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Too much information, and yet, in her case, not enough. In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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cf98ff7
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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 America ad Europe, this symbol of heritage and lineage, would be ridiculed in India. Within Bengali families, individual names are sacred, inviolable. They are not meant to be inherited or shared.
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jhumpa-lahiri
the-namesake
tradition
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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912747c
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How many times does a person write his name in a lifetime--a million? Two million?
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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bc74515
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Should I dream of a day, in the future, when I'll no longer need the dictionary, the notebook, the pen? A day when I can read in Italian without tools, the way I read in English? Shouldn't that be the point of all this? I don't think so. When I read in Italian, I'm a more active reader, more involved, even if less skilled. I like the effort. I prefer the limitations. I know that in some way my ignorance is useful to me.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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23b0658
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I don't know, he said, handing her the ticket. He'd been standing there all the while on the sidewalk, waiting for her. Waiting, until they were in the darkness of the theatre, to take her hand.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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18fb3bd
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She had denied herself the pleasure of openly sharing life with the person she loved.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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ceeb78a
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Writing down call numbers with short pencils, searching up and down aisles that would turn dark when the timers on the lights expired. She recalls, visually, certain passages in the books she'd read. Which side of the book, where on the page.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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0fef892
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Plato says the purpose of philosophy is to teach us how to die.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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81b63e8
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The imperfection became a mark of distinction about their home. Something visitors noticed, the first family anecdote that was told.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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e50649e
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That night when I went to the bathroom I only pretended to brush my teeth, for I feared that I would somehow rinse the prayer out as well. I wet the brush and rearranged the tube of paste to prevent my parents from asking any questions, and feel asleep with sugar on my tongue.
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Jhumpa Lahiri |
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fb4b3f5
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Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tranquility of the evenings. The promise that she would find things where she put them, that there would be no interruption, no surprise. It greeted her at the end of each day and lay still with her at night. She had no wish to overcome it. Rather, it was something upon which she'd come to depend, with which she'd entered by now into a relation..
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Jhumpa Lahiri |