Jhumpa Lahiri is an American author of Indian origin, who is particularly famous for her novels portraying the lives of immigrant families in the United States, and has won plenty of accolades throughout her career. Lahiri was born to immigrant parents in London and grew up in the United States. She considers herself an American and most of her work draws heavily from her experiences as an Indian-American growing up in the United States. She came into prominence in 2000 when her debut effort, a short story collection titled ‘Interpreter of Maladies’, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and since then she has not looked back. Among her novels, ‘The Namesake’ was well received and was later made into a movie, while ‘The Lowland, was also widely appreciated and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize as well as the National Book Award for Fiction. Lahiri is without doubt one of the world’s most loved authors and here are some of the best quotes by her.
Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.
Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.
Jhumpa Lahiri
And yet he had loved her. A Bookish girl heedless of her beauty, unconscious of her effect. She'd been prepared to live her life alone but from the moment he'd known her he'd needed her.
She watched his lips forming the words, at the same time she heard them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.
That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.
With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether.
Jhumpa Lahiri
On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold.
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.
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.
There was the anxiety that one day would not follow the next, combined with the certainty that it would.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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.
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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
...that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of secondhand pants, bought for fifty cents.
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.
Jhumpa Lahiri
He learned not to mind the silences.
Jhumpa Lahiri
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.
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.
There was the focus of seeking pleasure, and the numbing effect, once they were finished, removing all specific thoughts from her brain. It ushered in the solid, dreamless sleep that otherwise eluded her.
Jhumpa Lahiri
He saw that his mother was dwelling in an alternate time, a more bearable reality.
Plato says the purpose of philosophy is to teach us how to die.
Jhumpa Lahiri
How many times does a person write his name in a lifetime—a million? Two million?
Jhumpa Lahiri
Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity of from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.
She had preferred being on the plane, detached from the earth, the illusion of sitting still.
Jhumpa Lahiri
In those six weeks I regarded her arrival as I would the arrival of a coming month, or season - something inevitable, but meaningless at the same time.
The nickname had irritated and pleased her at the same time. It made her feel foolish, but she was aware that in renaming her he had claimed her somehow, already made her his own.
The notice informed them that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M.
Jhumpa Lahiri
The cosmetics that had seemed superfluous were necessary now, not to improve her but to define her somehow.
Jhumpa Lahiri
So that she began to see herself more clearly, as a thin film of dust was wiped from a sheet of glass.
Jhumpa Lahiri
What she’d done for him, because he’d asked.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Only then, forced at six months to confront his destiny, does he begin to cry.
Jhumpa Lahiri
They still feel somehow in transit, still disconnected from their lives, bound up in an alternate schedule, an intimacy only the four of them would share.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Reading in another language implies a perpetual state of growth, of possibility. I
And yet my lexicon develops without logic, in a darting, fleeting manner. The words appear, accompany me for a while, then, often without warning, abandon me.
He longed for sleep, but it would not immerse him; that night the waters he sought for his repose were deep enough to wade in, but not to swim.
Jhumpa Lahiri
He waited for chaotic games to end, for shouts to subside. His favorite moments were when he was alone, or felt alone. Lying in bed in the morning, watching sunlight flickering like a restless bird on the wall.
She was unprepared for the landscape to be so altered. For there to be no trace of that evening, forty autumns ago.
Jhumpa Lahiri
And yet it felt like an invasion of the part of his body, the physical sense that was most precious: something that betrayed him and also refused to abandon him.
In their silence they continued both to protect me and to punish me. The memory of that night was now the only tie between us, eclipsing everything else.
Given that she barely saw her father, given that she continued to measure out her contact with him, whether to deny herself or to deny him, she could not be sure.
Jhumpa Lahiri
If I stop to think about fans, or bestselling, or not bestselling, or good reviews, or not-good reviews, it just becomes too much. It's like staring at the mirror all day.
They tolerate my mistakes. They correct me, they encourage me, they provide the words I lack. They speak clearly, patiently. Just like parents with their children. The
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.
