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Language and identity are so fundamentally intertwined. You peel back all the layers in terms of what we wear and what we eat and all the things that mark us, and in the end, what we have are our words.


Jhumpa Lahiri

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I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made ...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES The words you can’t find, you borrow.
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because w...
GABRIELLE ZEVIN It was pivotal in making you but you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that ...
DOUGLAS COUPLAND Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an...
LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD If we all look at life we think how nice, then we look at death and everybody goes oh you can say th...
GARY F EVANS... Air is approximately 21% oxygen, our brains feed off of oxygen. So basically we are all airheads.
ANDONI GARCIA Inspired By Beauty In Creation We Are One
DANIEL GILMAN In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in se...
DOUGLAS COUPLAND In every passing moment that is not appreciated time cannot give it back to you. So in moments of id...
GARY F EVANS... Dae FATE NAYAE Nanagha Vandhuttoom Da, Sandy , Na Nata, London Lass,Russian Grapes, Ellorum Ippa Van...
SATHESH KUMAR M So, tomorrow, I'm leaving. And I'm not going to let that happen again with anyone else. I'm going to...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY you know what the best kind of organic certification would be? make an unannounced visit to a farm a...
MICHAEL POLLAN Same first name as a president and an obscure comic book character. Half-Jewish. Excellent grammar. ...
BECKY ALBERTALLI A couple of customers interrupted [...] who wanted to know if we had some YA book about ants and ali...
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON We are this fucking stick in the end...
DEYTH BANGER The farmer in us makes us do the things we do
SOTONYE ANGA We've got exactly what we need to fulfill our destiny!
ABHISHEK KUMAR Oi’m always noble, sir; it’s in my blood. ’As been ever since Oi ate that knight a few years b...
ELIZABETH HAYDON We may not get to choose how we die, but we can chose how we live.
The universe may for...
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON Dreams are hopeful because they exist as pure possibility. Unlike memories, which are fossils, long ...
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON You're a throwback."
"To what?"
Jess considered this. Hi-tech at work, Emily was paradoxic...
ALLEGRA GOODMAN Words speak to the the mind through the ears and actions speak to the mind through the eye
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Words speak to the mind through the ears; actions speak to the mind through the eye
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The road that connects our thoughts to the ears of others is our tongue. What travel on this road is...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH What love is it, then, that has no need of words to call us? In whose image are we made, to take suc...
CHRISTIAN BOBIN There is a farmer in every person. It is the farmer in you that makes you sow and reap
SOTONYE ANGA Everything passes by, and we are left with just our memories
BEN OAK Stand for something. Make your life mean something. Start where you are with what you have. You are ...
GERMANY KENT If you love someone you must set them free like the wind and give them the respect they deserve.If y...
GARY F EVANS... Chewing tiger nut is good exercise for the mouth, i love its nutty taste
SOTONYE ANGA I am aware that everyone that exists has a story, and we all exist because that story is important f...
ARZELL Because you can only die once but you can suffer forever.
SHAUN DAVID HUTCHINSON But I don’t want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.'Oh, you can’t help that,' said the Cat...
LEWIS CARROLL Not," Swift said firmly, "for all the tea in China."
"That expression has never made sense to m...
LISA KLEYPAS The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.
JIM HARRISON Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be ... But i expect ...
THOMAS HARRIS "Since we don't always get we want, the growth is in making what we get, what we want." - Simcha Glu...
SIMCHA GLUCK The heart of the home beats in the kitchen and a healthy one beats three times a day
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA The brain is not nourished on beans and truffles but rather the food manages to reconstitute the mol...
ANTONIO GRAMSCI No need to feel shame for what you are.
DEYTH BANGER Spiritual identity means we are not what we do or what people say about us. And we are not what we h...
HENRI NOUWEN We are what we are.
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA When we are very young, our parents inadvertently program us to be what we eventually become.
PEGGY TONEY HORTON Here is one fact 1 minute to finish the class, 1 day to die, one day behind that fact, one day in th...
DEYTH BANGER Every little gracious act adds to the quotient of grace in the world - how gracious can you be today...
ANGIE KARAN The first thing to understand is that being a vegetarian is actually a private matter. I'm still tak...
SLOANE CROSLEY Are shadows a shadowy reflection of the soul or is it a reflection of who we really are, or possibly...
GARY F EVANS... we
sat there
smoking
cigarettes
at
5
in the morning.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI That's the good thing about it. Nothing counts except what's goin' on around you.
H.L. DAVIS What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is...
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT We have to look deeply to see how we grow our food, so we can eat in ways that preserve our collecti...
THICH NHAT HANH Yeah, because what it all boils down to is at the end of the day, we are all riding on the same boat...
BOOTSY COLLINS Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. Our morality is based on so many factors: of where we were born, who we were born to, what values we...
OSCAR ISAAC We are blazing our own trail in terms of what products and offerings we have.
JAKE BRACE We have tears in our eyes
As we wave our goodbyes,
We so loved being with you, we three. ROALD DAHL She is sugar, curiosity, and rain.
E. LOCKHART You are what you are, and what you are is not me!
ANTHONY T. HINCKS I have been in the field and they say 'What are you telling us? We eat dead chickens and we have bee...
ABDULSALAM NASIDI They know what's at stake. They know what we're all about, so we never have to talk about the winnin...
ALLEN ROSSI I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silen...
JEANETTE WINTERSON You certainly believe in the power of love. And throughout the series, you see how love shows itself...
MOUTASEM ALGHARATI What we have left behind is beautiful, captivating, and inviting. What lies ahead of us is magnifice...
DEBASISH MRIDHA There are so many things we do in life that define the real meaning of our lives. There are so many ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH What nourishes us at home and in school is what inspires us. When we get awareness and learn about t...
VICENTE FOX We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had with souls that made our souls wiser...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON It was frustrating to still be in the dark about something and be given only so little light.
LAUREN LOLA But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of...
JHUMPA LAHIRI You often love someone not for what they are, but for what you are when you are with them.
JEFFREY FRY Sometimes we represent our weakness as if it were bad. We don’t think it’s okay to be weak…We ...
HENRY CLOUD What makes us different from consulting-type operations is that we are all manufacturing people. The...
LARRY SYKES Everyone, this is the new girl. Elder knows her. New girl, this is everyone.” A few people look up...
BETH REVIS We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in ...
ALBERT EINSTEIN We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in ...
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY When we pity ourselves all we see is ourselves. When we have problems, all we see are our problems a...
ANN MARIE AGUILAR Empathy is a bridge. Our sufferings connect us. Let pain make you softer.
AKIROQ BROST Outside... we are just nobody... you could meet me outside... but it doesn't mean that I am DeYtH Ba...
DEYTH BANGER Come on... come on... I am waiting for answer...
...

Silence doesn't make it... bet...
DEYTH BANGER What, the glass is half-full instead of half-empty? Bullshit. What they don't tell you is that regar...
T.J. KLUNE Your most precious memories will focus on those you loved, those who loved you, and what you did tog...
JAMES C. DOBSON Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON It is not what we have that matters; what matters is what we give away with love.
DEBASISH MRIDHA Our parents can show us a lot of things: they can show us how we are to be and what things we ought ...
C. JOYBELL C. See the world as a farm, and everything we do as farming
SOTONYE ANGA I think what we did was slack up on a lot of it, and that's what caused the problems. So when we red...
THERESA ADAMS Being present is being connected to All Things.
S. KELLEY HARRELL, M. DIV. What do you care about deeply? What would you dedicate your life to if you could? What would you die...
DEREK RYDALL Your religious book(s) mentioned the power of mind thousands of years ago so WHY do you have to wait...
MADDY MALHOTRA Fueled by faith and passion for our true priorities we're going to drive against traffic in order to...
CRAIG GROESCHEL Yes, I know that now that there is truth in beauty and beauty in truth. My nature is to be depressiv...
ABIGAIL GEORGE We all need poetry. The moments in our lives that are characterized by language that has to do with ...
TRACY K. SMITH We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thou...
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoug...
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA An Error is like Salt and A 'Sincere' Apology is like Water and a ''Repeated Same Error'' is like a ...
ANUROOP TYAGI You can have the greatest player in terms of mastering an instrument and you could be yawning your h...
JOHN MCLAUGHLIN What I really need is for people to know that I don't just do this, I do this and this and this ...
SUZANNE SOMERS Convinced that we're living the whole time that we're dying.
We decide to go out walking the wh...
TEGAN QUIN Everyone is the Umbrella Man and he is everyone. Every cough, sneeze, smile and wave means both ever...
CRAIG CLEVENGER

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 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 In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabl...
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