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The urge to convert experience into a group of words that are in a grammatical relation to one another is the most basic, ongoing impulse of my life.


Jhumpa Lahiri

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But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of...
JHUMPA LAHIRI I am often asked how it is that I am able to value people to such a deep degree. Apparently, I exhib...
C. JOYBELL C. 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 You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
HENRY JAMES Some people never take a chance and never know what it's like to live life to the full.
CHLOE THURLOW Life is not a game. Still, in this life, we choose the games we live to play.
J.R. RIM I believe in the word of the U.S. authorities. They have expressed themselves clearly in the proper ...
RICARDO ALARCON The books I love most are the ones that combine some sort of gripping story with really beautiful or...
KAREN THOMPSON WALKER The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH the deceased don’t want you to forget about them. They just want you to move past it; not to dwell...
JUSTIN PYFROM As far back as history records people thinking, thinking people have been befuddled by the mysteries...
LEWIS N. ROE She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I love my mom so much. I don't care if that's corny to say. I think on my next birthday, I'm going t...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY We Are All Infinite
STEPHEN CHBOSKY (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY That one moment when you know you are not a sad story. You are ALIVE.
STEPHAN CHBOSKY Somos quienes somos por un montón de razones.Quizás nunca conozcamos la mayoría de ellas.Pero aun...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Ambos dijeron que tomara asiento y parecían hablar en serio, así que me senté.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all beco...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybewe'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY There's nothing like the deep breathes after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore st...
STHEPHEN CHBOSKY no more pencils, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks, when the teacher rings the bell, drop...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I don't know the significance of this, but I find it very interesting.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Maybe it’s sad that these are now memories. And maybe it’s not sad.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I'm fucking the grave, I thought, I'm bringing the dead back to life...
CHARLES BUKOWSKI Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you...
C. JOYBELL C. Each man lives in his own universe and when he dies the world is over
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Beauty fades, but knowledge is eternal
ANDREW FAIRCHILD The inscription on his gravestone had felt so wholly insufficient the moment she saw it. Just a name...
STUART NADLER Never give up on you. In order to make a difference you would have to somehow be different.
JOHNNIE DENT JR. How should I know?" said Alice, surprised at her own courage. "It's no business of mine."
The Q...
LEWIS CARROLL I'm not saying that I'm better than anyone... I'm just saying that I'm one-of-a-kind.
C LIONG How lucky I am to have known somebody and something that saying goodbye to is so damned awful.
EVANS G. VALENS Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y...
THEHEALTHFOODGURU Like a deep sad note
played beneath the ocean
waving through the orb
the memories of ...
PAWAN MISHRA We may say that a basic substance is one which has a lone pair of electrons which may be used to com...
GILBERT NEWTON LEWIS The earth is an arena of champions. We are all champions. We all did overcome millions of potential ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think eve...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I live my life progressing for nothing else but the best.
JONATHAN ANTHONY BURKETT Without words to objectify and categorize our sensations and place them in relation to one another, ...
RUTH HUBBARD Plunging in “truths” about God is like walking on the bottom of a sea that is not there, searchi...
MARIANA FULGER I accept the fact that there is always a way out in every situation we find ourselves but, until we ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH For me, my life is a journey.
JAY ELECTRONICA May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Burnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning...
GRANT MORRISON The only deadly disease I have seen that is causing great harm and massacre latently yet the world h...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH Semantics is about the relation of words to thoughts, but it also about the relation of words to oth...
STEVEN PINKER Clay in the hands of a good potter suffers so many good turns, but in the end, we see its real and t...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH The books brought brilliance to my life, and they brought an understanding: Life is a story. Everyth...
RENE DENFELD Life begins somewhere and ends somewhere with time but to get somewhere with the life you have depen...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH When sorrow knocks at your door, tell it you're busy finding happiness.
SARU SINGHAL We die a day at a time
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Nothing in the world matters if you don't matter.
STEVEN CUOCO It is not possible that one man can convert another into a piece of property, thus at once annihilat...
ELIJAH PARISH LOVEJOY The scientific method gives us information by testing and repeating observable things so that we can...
LEWIS N. ROE The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make the people you...
FREDRIK BACKMAN Closed eyes, heart not beating, but a living love.
AVIS COREA His life seemed like a deck of cards, and in the midst of all those two’s and three’s someone ha...
TEKOA MANNING There are types of people who want to have leverage over other people's lives. For no other reason t...
C. JOYBELL C. If life is a bowl of cherries, what's inside of it?
JOSH STERN You deserve to be with somebody, who knows you're the one, from that very first moment he lays eyes ...
C. JOYBELL C. No one should let yesterday use up too much of today. Easy to say, hard to live.
ANDREA HAIRSTON It's nice to have things to look forward to.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Life is a bowl of cherries. Some cherries are rotten while others are good; its your job to throw ou...
C. JOYBELL C. I was suddenly very aware of the fact it was me standing up in that tunnel with the wind over my fac...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY The only perspective is to really be there.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I didn't feel like reading that night, so I went downstairs and watched a half-hour long commercial ...
STEPHEN CHBOSKY Why is England manufacturing bigger and better airplanes and bombs and at the same time churning out...
ANNE FRANK There are three basic problems: how a mind can know the world of nature, how it is possible for one ...
DONALD DAVIDSON My life is a struggle.
VOLTAIRE Eventually I came across another passage. This is what it said:
I am not commanding you, but I ...
NICHOLAS SPARKS To kill a mockingbird. If you haven't read it, I think you should because it is very interesting.
STEPHEN CHBOSKY I will never forget the vision of Jamie walking towards me.
NICHOLAS SPARKS As these images were going through my head, my breathing suddenly went still. I looked at Jamie, the...
NICHOLAS SPARKS You don't have to learn much out of books, it's like if you want to learn about cows, you go milk on...
HARPER LEE You can't really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.
HARPER LEE Words are the basic tools, if you are a writer. But why? Why do you choose one set of tools rather t...
JAMES HOUSTON These reforms are the best way to convert Europe into one of the most competitive, dynamic and prosp...
JOSE MARIA AZNAR While a picture paints a thousand words, a thousand words paints a masterpiece.
WILLIE HAYNES Vipassana meditation is an ongoing creative purification process. Observation of the moment-to-momen...
AMIT RAY In the journey of life, certain paths may seem to be leading nowhere because of a mountain or hill o...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH You're full of contradictions, Ms. Wallace."
I looked up at him and arched a brow. "I'm a girl...
TAMMARA WEBBER A tiny little baby!' says Tam. 'People look at me like I'm an animal. People who don't know me judge...
JON RONSON The only way he could have her was to shatter this stubborn faith of hers. In doing so, would he sha...
FRANCINE RIVERS From the Kindle Book Reflections in the Mirror of Life:
“In a slum somewhere in India
As...
THE PROPHET OF LIFE Maya Angelou had the ability to glean inspiration out of pain.
THE PROPHET OF LIFE If we cannot always be entirely sane in our relationships, the kindest thing we can do for those who...
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE One of the most important things I have found is that no one school of thought has all of the answer...
LEWIS N. ROE A Ritual to Read to Each Other


If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and...
WILLIAM STAFFORD You release the pain of the past and press on. It's a new day, and God is doing a new thing. He want...
CRAIG GROESCHEL Though we are terrorized by death, it's not different from birth, it just happens
BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA For example, one group may need all of the time to simply clarify challenging vocabulary words while...
ERIK MICKELSON Şi, vorbind mai general, oricare ţi-ar fi linia în viaţă, dacă constaţi că alţii nu-ţi pre...
BERTRAND RUSSELL, ÎN CăUTAREA FERICIRII The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE The most happy man is he who knows how to bring into relation the end and beginning of his life.
JOHANN VON GOETHE

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 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