In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Related But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of... JHUMPA LAHIRI Actually the copies of characters is something I don't particularly like to talk about in articl... JIM HENSON In early to mid-20th century plays, characters speak in complete sentences and develop thought throu... ALED DAVIES An emotionally locked person refuses to let go of their sad memories and live in the now. KILROY J. OLDSTER Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON This is the beauty of fiction. We may not like these characters, but we inhabit them. T. C. BOYLE I do my job like I breathe — so if I can’t breathe I’m in trouble. KARL LAGERFELD Use your heart. Understand. Learn to see things in the now, not as they were or will be, or as ... E.J. PATTEN My job isn't to preach to people, it's to entertain them. I like letting the characters spea... KARIN SLAUGHTER Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over. RICHARD CARLSON I've definitely been asked about some of the characters. These characters are composites. In general... DAVE GARDNER Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breat... STEPHEN KING It took me years to learn that sentences in fiction must do much more than stand around and look pre... KAREN THOMPSON WALKER There are direct paths to a successful career. But there are plenty of indirect paths, too. So many ... CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN I do my job like I breathe. KARL LAGERFELD I breathe music... The acting is a job, but music is life. You need a job to live. ASTRO The test scenes that have been converted into IMAX 3D look, sound and feel absolutely amazing. The m... BRYAN SINGER I can't invent stuff, but the techniques fiction writers use to create character and suspense can al... TRACY KIDDER ...not just to exist, not just to breathe in and breathe out, but to live. KRISTEN ASHLEY This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting o... NEIL GAIMAN I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved t... KAREN THOMPSON WALKER I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of pr... PABLO PICASSO The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious abo... MARY MCCARTHY The moment you breathe your first breath, you won. J.R. RIM The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and pa... COLM TOIBIN No, of course not. But surely you know your affair couldn't go on forever." "Forever has no mea... ELLEN HOPKINS I promise myself that I will enjoy every minute of the day that is given me to live. THICH NHAT HANH You can't go back to how things were. How you thought they were. All you really have is...now. JAY ASHER Life is a journey, not a destination. RALPH WALDO EMERSON We had many future plans, too many to speak about. I will never, ever forget him. He will live in my... ERICA LEE The goal of any spiritual person is to strive towards attaining self-realization by living spontaneo... KILROY J. OLDSTER We need to embrace every day and enjoy it as much as we can. KAREN TODD SCARPULLA The books I love most are the ones that combine some sort of gripping story with really beautiful or... KAREN THOMPSON WALKER I believe that the writer should tell a story. I believe in plot. I believe in creating characters a... ERNEST GAINES I like characters. I like spirited characters whether they exist in fiction or real life. Whether th... MARC JACOBS Wherever you are, be there. If you can be fully present now, you’ll know what it means to live. STEVE GOODIER You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain th... A. S. BYATT 6 Ways To Give Your Mind A Break: 1. Stop stressing 2. Stop worrying 3. Give re... GERMANY KENT Mythology and science both extend the scope of human beings. Like science and technology, mythology,... KAREN ARMSTRONG These are the days that must happen to you. WALT WHITMAN If there's one thing I learned, it's that nobody is here forever. You have to live for the moment, e... SIMONE ELKELES The point is to be in the moment, not miss the moment while trying to capture it. SHERALYN PRATT That's what's happening... zombies are out... but in hour movie... not in series. DEYTH BANGER We feel that by actually making the effort, not just talking about it here, but also going to Iraq a... DAWUD WALID "if it hurts when you laugh, it's a good indication you need to do it more often, you may not live a... SHAUN PARKER The hardest part about writing fiction is finding long stretches of time to do it: for me, this mean... J. COURTNEY SULLIVAN [England] a soil whose air is deemed too pure for slaves to
breathe in. CAPEL LOFFT Wake up to a brand new day and realize why you woke up to meet the day! Live to the end of another d... ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH In a sense I do feel very privileged. But I don't speak to Gordon about Alex and I don't speak to Al... MARK MCGHEE There are only two things you’ll ever need to know about me, Farin—and you should know them well... HEATHER O'BRIEN I have a lot of blurring between fiction and non-fiction in so many of my works. For example, my fir... IRVIN D. YALOM The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my charac... ANNE RICE Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on. GEORGE SANTAYANA What day is it?" It's today," squeaked Piglet. My favorite day," said Pooh. A.A. MILNE Be present in all things and thankful for all things. MAYA ANGELOU Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is yo... BETTY SMITH Do not look back and grieve over the past, for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, ... IDA SCOTT TAYLOR MCKINNEY Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there... ALBERT EINSTEIN The only way to survive eternity is to be able to appreciate each moment. LAUREN KATE Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don't rent them out to to... JERRY SPINELLI Mindfulness is like that—it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and r... THICH NHAT HANH That's what fiction writers do: create characters and do terrible things to them for the enterta... GARRY TRUDEAU She looked just like a painting dying to speak. AESCHYLUS Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it ... LEMONY SNICKET We writers of series fiction tend to idealize ourselves in our characters, giving them attributes we... MARCIA MULLER You have to always try to think about them like real people first, and not just heroes. They have to... GREG BERLANTI Fiction may amuse us, but reality instills lessons to be imbibed through experience; to 'live' this ... HENRIETTA NEWTON MARTIN Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign your... HENRY DAVID THOREAU I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I'v... ANN BRASHARES I think the best fiction is a form of psychological suspense, even though I don't really write i... LYDIA MILLET I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them t... LUCIAN FREUD The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is ... TIM BERNERS-LEE I think you can do science fiction, but you have to ground it in some realism. People need to identi... FARAN TAHIR I like to take certain aspects of genre fiction and modify them in my own way. 'Your Republic Is... KIM YOUNG-HA What I hate in fiction is when the author knows better than the characters what they should do. PAT BARKER In the end it doesn't matter what you do. HARRISON BIRTWISTLE I always say that the characters in Jane Austen's original books are rather like zombies because... SETH GRAHAME-SMITH We live in a pretty apathetic age, yet we’re surrounded by an enormous amount of information about... HARUKI MURAKAMI The board of directors are local residents who live and breathe in the territory they cover. They al... ANDREW HAMILTON She was intimidating and all I could do was sit back on the couch as she paced back and forth, slowl... IN THE MAKING She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of ... ORSON SCOTT CARD I shall speak facts; but some will say I deal in fiction. OVID PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO I am careful about fiction. A novel is not a tract or an essay. If I want to write about land reform... VIKRAM SETH We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story. MARY MCCARTHY Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't mer... C.S. LEWIS Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't m... C. S. LEWIS People have a certain perfection about them, no matter who they are. Like when Janis Joplin sang. Go... JEFF BUCKLEY The great advantage of hydrogen ion budgets is that they integrate information about many chemical a... DANIEL MARKEWITZ The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one... SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS Good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs... JOHN KOTTER We like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times. DAVID SHIELDS There are, for example, exemptions in FOIA in which the government can withhold certain kinds of inf... ALBERTO GONZALES But when I worked on a painting I would do it from a drawing but I would put certain things I was fa... ROY LICHTENSTEIN Everybody had pieces of information, but nobody had all the information. We have to do a better job ... KATHY KLEIN To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too. You can only express in wor... GERHARD RICHTER American newspapers write about the information economy. In contrast, Europeans speak of an 'informa... IAN ANGELL We have ample law covering the world of goods. But we now live in an information economy where the v... HOLLY TOWLE Telegraphs are machines for conveying information over extensive lines with great rapidity. CHARLES BABBAGE There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy. He want... C.S. LEWIS In time, we will have to recognise that it is not 'nature' that we need to protect, but ours... JOHN BURNSIDE
More Jhumpa Lahiri
The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive. JHUMPA LAHIRI Isolation offered its own form of companionship JHUMPA LAHIRI That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet. JHUMPA LAHIRI I feel partly American, but I have an ambiguous relation with both America and India, the only two c... JHUMPA LAHIRI A lot of my personality was informed by feeling very different in the world I grew up in, feeling th... JHUMPA LAHIRI The essential dilemma of my life is between my deep desire to belong and my suspicion of belonging. JHUMPA LAHIRI I think, like any artist or any writer, I just want to have that pure freedom of expression and of t... JHUMPA LAHIRI All American fiction could be classified as immigrant fiction. JHUMPA LAHIRI When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Winning the Pulitzer is wonderful and it's an honor and I feel so humbled and so grateful, but I... JHUMPA LAHIRI My parents had an arranged marriage, as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father ca... JHUMPA LAHIRI Language and identity are so fundamentally intertwined. You peel back all the layers in terms of wha... JHUMPA LAHIRI I have two young children, and I will say that motherhood is its own peak, just like in the process ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Immersing myself in Shakespeare's plays, reading them closely under the guidance of a brilliant,... JHUMPA LAHIRI In graduate school, I decide to write my doctoral thesis on how Italian architecture influenced Engl... JHUMPA LAHIRI I think it's the small things, the smaller episodes and details that I linger on and try to draw... JHUMPA LAHIRI You can't have a hit every time. The main thing is to keep on working and not be afraid to take ... JHUMPA LAHIRI He told me he was working as an interpreter in a doctor's office in Brookline, Massachusetts, wh... JHUMPA LAHIRI I think that what I have been truly searching for as a person, as a writer, as a thinker, as a daugh... JHUMPA LAHIRI This story is based on a gentleman who indeed did... used to come to my parents' house in 1971 f... JHUMPA LAHIRI I find it really liberating to be in a place where I am a foreigner in every way. I've lived wit... JHUMPA LAHIRI On the screen I saw tanks rolling through dusty streets, and fallen buildings, and forests of unfami... JHUMPA LAHIRI The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace. JHUMPA LAHIRI Language, identity, place, home: these are all of a piece - just different elements of belonging and... JHUMPA LAHIRI I've gained a lot from James Joyce, Tolstoy, Chekhov and R. K. Narayan. While writing, I try to ... JHUMPA LAHIRI It took me a long time to even dare to envision myself as a writer. I was very uncertain and hesitan... JHUMPA LAHIRI From the beginnings of literature, poets and writers have based their narratives on crossing borders... JHUMPA LAHIRI Surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a p... JHUMPA LAHIRI I speak English. I grew up speaking Bengali. This is the normal, the known, the obvious composition ... JHUMPA LAHIRI I don't know Bengali perfectly. I don't know how to write it or even read it. I have an acce... JHUMPA LAHIRI It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My n... JHUMPA LAHIRI The knowledge of death seemed present in both sisters—it was something about the way they carried ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it. JHUMPA LAHIRI Writing has certain advantages; film is another way to tell a story. An experienced filmmaker will t... JHUMPA LAHIRI Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. Blindly... JHUMPA LAHIRI I think if you speak to any creative person, there's something so powerful - so intoxicating, if... JHUMPA LAHIRI On the technical side, I hope that my writing is evolving and maturing, ripening, deepening. JHUMPA LAHIRI I'm always intrigued by authors who say, 'This book took 17 drafts.' They're very cl... JHUMPA LAHIRI I have two passports because I have to have at least one, and I really don't know how I define m... JHUMPA LAHIRI I think there are a lot of misconceptions on both sides, the developing vs. the developed world, esp... JHUMPA LAHIRI I had been learning Italian for years. I always loved Latin, but Italian is a living language; I'... JHUMPA LAHIRI The urge to convert experience into a group of words that are in a grammatical relation to one anoth... JHUMPA LAHIRI Almost any American can connect on some level to a family background of having come across some ocea... JHUMPA LAHIRI It was important to me to become day-to-day fluent and functional in another language, and about 10 ... JHUMPA LAHIRI A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading. JHUMPA LAHIRI In college, I used to underline sentences that struck me, that made me look up from the page. They w... JHUMPA LAHIRI They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book. And the phrase itself was so... JHUMPA LAHIRI He saw that his mother was dwelling in an alternate time, a more bearable reality. JHUMPA LAHIRI Each day she removes a small portion of the unwanted things in people’s lives, though all of it, s... JHUMPA LAHIRI Descartes, in his Third Meditation, said that God re-created the body at each successive moment. So ... JHUMPA LAHIRI When Deepa poured Bela some water from the urn that stood on a little stool, in the corner of the ro... JHUMPA LAHIRI She had preferred being on the plane, detached from the earth, the illusion of sitting still. JHUMPA LAHIRI Time flowed for Bela in the opposite direction. The day after yesterday, she sometimes said. Pronoun... JHUMPA LAHIRI Plato says the purpose of philosophy is to teach us how to die. JHUMPA LAHIRI Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tr... JHUMPA LAHIRI But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out ... JHUMPA LAHIRI The imperfection became a mark of distinction about their home. Something visitors noticed, the firs... JHUMPA LAHIRI Writing down call numbers with short pencils, searching up and down aisles that would turn dark when... JHUMPA LAHIRI I don't know, he said, handing her the ticket. He'd been standing there all the while on the sidewal... JHUMPA LAHIRI Too much information, and yet, in her case, not enough. In a world of diminishing mystery, the unkno... 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 ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Nor was her love for Udayan recognizable or intact. Anger was always mounted to it, zigzagging throu... JHUMPA LAHIRI There was the anxiety that one day would not follow the next, combined with the certainty that it wo... JHUMPA LAHIRI It was the English word she used. It was in English that the past was unilateral; in Bengali, the wo... JHUMPA LAHIRI ...learning was an act of rediscovery, knowledge a form of remembering. JHUMPA LAHIRI The future haunted but kept her alive; it remained her sustenance and also her predator. JHUMPA LAHIRI Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. JHUMPA LAHIRI She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart an... JHUMPA LAHIRI War will bring the revolution; revolution will stop the war, JHUMPA LAHIRI With children the clock is reset. We forget what came before JHUMPA LAHIRI With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether. JHUMPA LAHIRI And yet he had loved her. A Bookish girl heedless of her beauty, unconscious of her effect. She'd be... JHUMPA LAHIRI Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tr... JHUMPA LAHIRI For that story, I took as my subject a young woman whom I got to know over the course of a couple of... JHUMPA LAHIRI In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists. JHUMPA LAHIRI I've always been searching to arrive at a certain voice that will probably elude me forever. JHUMPA LAHIRI I think about the structure, sure. I think about what's going to happen, and how it's going ... JHUMPA LAHIRI But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of... JHUMPA LAHIRI On weekdays, as soon as she picked Bela from the bus stop and brought her home, she went straight in... JHUMPA LAHIRI While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new worl... JHUMPA LAHIRI Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each pe... JHUMPA LAHIRI I recently discovered the work of Giorgio Manganelli, who wrote a collection called 'Centuria,... JHUMPA LAHIRI I'm from Kingston, R.I., sort of on the University of Rhode Island campus - on the margins of th... JHUMPA LAHIRI Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so f... JHUMPA LAHIRI I love reading poetry, and yet, at this point, the thought of writing a poem, to me, is tantamount t... JHUMPA LAHIRI If certain books are to be termed 'immigrant fiction,' what do we call the rest? Native fict... JHUMPA LAHIRI If you look at my characters as a group, they all have a different relationship with the way that pl... JHUMPA LAHIRI Even printed, on pages that are bound, sentences remain unsettled organisms. Years later, I can alwa... JHUMPA LAHIRI I've inherited a sense of that loss from my parents because it was so palpable all the time whil... JHUMPA LAHIRI Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the b... JHUMPA LAHIRI When you’re in love, you want to live forever. You want the emotion, the excitement you feel to la... JHUMPA LAHIRI You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much abo... JHUMPA LAHIRI On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a ... JHUMPA LAHIRI It imparts a certain momentum to nuclear negotiations with the US. France has played a significant r... DILIP LAHIRI There is a great deal of French interest in India now that must still be converted into action on th... DILIP LAHIRI