Quotes by Jhumpa Lahiri

He owned an expensive camera that required thought before you pressed the shutter, and I quickly became his favorite subject, round-faced, missing teeth, my thick bangs in need of a trim. They are still the pictures of myself I like best, for they convey that confidence of youth I no longer possess, especially in front of a camera.

Belonging to another man and therefore not even a little bit to him.

In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.

With children the clock is reset. We forget what came before

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.

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.

But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out of his dreams, its reality and its particular logic rendered meaningless in the light of day. The difference was so extreme that he could not accommodate the two places together in his mind. In this enormous new country, there seemed to be nowhere for the old to reside. There was nothing to link them; he was the sole link. Here life ceased to obstruct or assault him. Here was a place where humanity was not always pushing, rushing, running as if with a fire at its back

Will you remember this day, Gogol? his father had asked, turning back to look at him, his hands pressed like earmuffs to either side of his head. How long do I have to remember it? Over the rise and fall of the wind, he could hear his fathers laughter. He was standing there, waiting for Gogol to catch up, putting out a hand as Gogol drew near. Try to remember it always, he said once Gogol reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting. Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.

I returned to my existence, the existence I had chosen instead of you.

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.

I owed the greater apology, but at the same time I knew that was done was done, that no matter what I said now I would never be able to make it right.

On weekdays, as soon as she picked Bela from the bus stop and brought her home, she went straight into the kitchen, washing up the morning dishes shed ignored, then getting dinner started. She measured out the nightly cup of rice, letting it soak in a pan on the counter. She peeled onions and potatoes and picked through lentils and prepared another nights dinner, then fed Bela. She was never able to understand why this relatively unchallenging set of chores felt so relentless. When she was finished, she did not understand why they had depleted her

She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.

The blood of too many, dissolving the very stain.

While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination. (from The Third and Final Continent)

Nor was her love for Udayan recognizable or intact. Anger was always mounted to it, zigzagging through her like some helplessly mating pair of insects. Anger at him for dying when he might have lived. For bringing her happiness, and then taking it away. For trusting her, only to betray her. For believing in sacrifice, only to be so selfish in the end.

No more bells ringing in the middle of the afternoon demolishing the rest of the day. No more waiting for the situation to change.

She had denied herself the pleasure of openly sharing life with the person she loved.

Its easier to surrender to confinement.

Im bound to fail when I write in Italian, but unlike my sense of failure in the past, this doesnt torment or grieve me.