FastSaying

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

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I like to open for a band as it brings on sort of a challenge and it makes things more interesting. ...
KELLY JONES But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of...
JHUMPA LAHIRI To become a celebrity is to become a brand name. There is Ivory Soap, Rice Krispies, and Philip Roth...
PHILIP ROTH I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will...
EDWARD R. MURROW He brings the greatest conflict into the history of mankind. He will come soon to our world just lik...
TOBA BETA You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace."
I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl...
TAMMARA WEBBER The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS You're still lovely," Mor said a bit gently.
Elain offered a half smile. "I suppose that war m...
SARAH J. MAAS If I provide for this life and turn away from the Lord, I am wise for a moment, but lost forever.
FRANCINE RIVERS The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS If a woman stands in a kitchen rubbing her eyes and pouring coffee with no one there to see her, doe...
MARYA HORNBACHER The issue isn't whether he loved you, it's how much. Too much. Love can be poison
SARAH J. MAAS I am broken and healing, but every piece of my heart belong to you.
SARAH J. MAAS He thinks he'll be remembered as the villain in the story. But I forgot to tell him that the villain...
SARAH J. MAAS Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold ...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Hodor," said Hodor.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN You do what you love, what you need
SARAH J. MAAS I turned.
Rhysand leaned against the archway into the sitting room, arms crossed, wings nowhere...
SARAH J. MAAS For years, I believed that anything worth doing was worth doing early. In graduate school, I submitt...
ADAM GRANT Imagine life as a game, a game that is filled with obstacles and hazards to overcome but sometimes y...
GARY F EVANS... One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE It was on the top of her bottom, ... He turned about 14 shades of red and six weeks later had a sten...
GLENN RICHARDSON A family is like a card game, on one hand, you can get a really bad hand and on the other, your hand...
GARY F EVANS... I'm in a loft and the kitchen is in the very center of the apartment. The whole place revolves aroun...
TED ALLEN These injuries have been a shocker. In the space of two weeks everyone in the flat (apartment) has g...
AARON REDMOND My doctor gave me two weeks to live. I hope they're in August.
RONNIE SHAKES Never give up on you. In order to make a difference you would have to somehow be different.
JOHNNIE DENT JR. I realized that day that blessings come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes.
CRAIG GROESCHEL I'm in a loft and the kitchen is in the very center of the apartment. The whole place revolves a...
TED ALLEN She made a fence of phrases, which seemed a treachery to herself.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR You are the blood of the dragon. You can make a hat.
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN It is much more valuable to look for the strength in others. You can gain nothing by criticizing the...
DAISAKU IKEDA the deceased don’t want you to forget about them. They just want you to move past it; not to dwell...
JUSTIN PYFROM When a lot of voices, make up a noise, the man who is silent represents a voice.
APURVA GAGLANI The first thing I do whenever I go to Thailand is seek out the closest restaurant or stall selling m...
HANYA YANAGIHARA I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah had chosen Spanx as one of her favorite products in ...
SARA BLAKELY We each have a special something we can get only at a special time of our life. like a small flame. ...
HARUKI MURAKAMI Allie, what do the Stars tell me to do? You know I don't understand the scientific part.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN The capacity of humans to believe in what seems to me highly improbable- from table tapping to the s...
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN It is strange being in a crowd where no one knows your face or cares for your purpose. In Lykos, I w...
PIERCE BROWN History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN I grew up in Louisiana. We have red beans and rice, and there's a Popeye's on every corner.
DANIEL CORMIER I want to share this bed with you, though," I breathed. "I want you to hold me."
Stars flicker...
SARAH J. MAAS Rice Krispies happens to be one of my favorite junk foods, just as I regard Michener as superior amo...
CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT Rice Krispies happens to be one of my favorite junk foods, just as I regard Michener as superior amo...
CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN We're tied to a 10-game schedule and the dome date (the Show-Me Bowl games in St. Louis on Thanksgiv...
JOEL WELLS Wouldn't you rather live 10 years in a bowl of ice cream than 100 years in a bag of rice cakes
DR. DANNY CROSBY Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl, And, scarce-suspected, animate the whole.
SYDNEY SMITH He once told me that an August evening was "as hot as three toads in a Cuisinart," a comparison that...
DEAN KOONTZ Evening red and morning grey help the traveler on his way; evening grey and morning red bring down r...
PROVERB I feed Volnay, who eats in her unusual way, delicately removing one piece of kibble at a time from h...
STACEY BALLIS Could you let me have the 3 weeks due to me now and if I work again before August I must of course r...
BASIL RATHBONE It's unfortunate that the next two years are the oddities, ... Because most years there are two week...
RAY ANDERSON You're the man who stands on the street corner with a roll of toilet paper, and written on each squa...
KURT VONNEGUT Absoballylutely top hole, wot. A and B the C of D I'd say. . . Above and Beyond the Call of Duty.
BRIAN JACQUES Now is the only time we have, and the only time that we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and...
CONFUCIUS That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Kn...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal.
I was a survivor, and I was strong.
I would no...
SARAH J. MAAS I sipped from my wine. "And if he had grabbed me?"

There was nothing but uncompromising w...
SARAH J. MAAS There you are. I've been looking for you.

His first words to me— not a lie at a...
SARAH J. MAAS I was not prey any longer, I decided as I eased up to that door.
And I was not a mouse.
I ...
SARAH J. MAAS No one was my master— but I might be master of everything, if I wished. If I dared.
SARAH J. MAAS He drained his glass. "I made a mistake."
"It's not the end of the world if you do that every n...
SARAH J. MAAS I will kill anyone who harms you," Rhys snarled. "I will kill them, and take a damn long time doing ...
SARAH J. MAAS Julia poured tea gracefully, but it all ran over into the saucers.
ELIZABETH TAYLOR The next day, the villages came closer together until the beginnings and endings could no longer be ...
PATRICK W. CARR It appeared to Harriet that she was always the one who remembered having seen other people. They nev...
ELIZABETH TAYLOR Would you like me to grovel with gratitude for bringing me here, High Lord?"
"Ah. The Suriel to...
SARAH J. MAAS The books I love most are the ones that combine some sort of gripping story with really beautiful or...
KAREN THOMPSON WALKER They went out on a New Year's Eve date in 2001. They married just a couple of years ago -- May 3, 20...
DALE RICH When I do entertain, in the summer, which is rare, I receive my guests on the front porch, set up wi...
ANDRE LEON TALLEY She would tuck Sam into her heart, a bright light for her to take out whenever things were darkest.
SARAH J. MAAS We'll pick (a date) in the coming weeks and they're welcome to show up.
JAY REIFF Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. It was frustrating to still be in the dark about something and be given only so little light.
LAUREN LOLA They say that a part of you dies when a special Loved One passes away...I disagree...I say a part of...
DANIEL YANEZ We received information within the last two weeks that there was a stolen tractor in the back yard a...
BOB BOONE I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.
MADELEINE L'ENGLE Even Lot might have been mistaken. But that’s what he promised ‘em – his virgin daughters, you...
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN God is the strength in which I trust." Lesson 47, A Course In Miracles
HELEN SCHUCMAN There isn't an hour of my life without you in it. I mend the boats, test them and all the while the ...
NICHOLAS SPARKS I truly can't believe it. It's a dream come true. As a kid I remember watching Jerry Rice and Joe Mo...
HINES WARD And it means snapshots, because that's what all stories I write come down to; each is a snapshot of ...
CAITLíN R. KIERNAN We asked them [Red Cross officials] for help because, two weeks out, we knew a lot of people in rura...
LATOSHA BROWN You deserve to be with somebody, who knows you're the one, from that very first moment he lays eyes ...
C. JOYBELL C. You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES Each man lives in his own universe and when he dies the world is over
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your he...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN In the rough-and-tumble play of politics, dog-whistle messages are copiously dispatched over the hea...
ERIK PEVERNAGIE We used to play football on the levee, with no shirts on in the summer - August in New Orleans - and...
AARON NEVILLE Now is the only time we have, and the only time we have any control over.
RICHARD CARLSON We were (housed) in a kitchen in a house on the property where the library is now. The first day, tw...
LOIS JACKSON Economically, the decrease in the lifespan of the reservoir will bring a reduction in electricity ge...
ARINAL JUNAIDI But I have always thought that these tulips must have had names. They were red, and orange and red, ...
NEIL GAIMAN I frowned at the eye in my palm. "What, literally shout at the tattoo?"
"You could try rubbing ...
SARAH J. MAAS This is a conservative figure, based on the services we have delivered to date and our projections o...
RICHARD PATTON I hate fussing about in the kitchen when I have people over to supper, so I make a rich beef stew co...
DEBORAH MOGGACH She remembers once handing her father a flower she picked and how in the act of giving she experienc...
GLENN HAYBITTLE Red onion skins and New Year's Eve have much in common - they both peel away to reveal new vibrancy.
ALEX MORRITT

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 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 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