Jhumpa Lahiri citations

“Je crois que traduire est la façon la plus profonde, la plus intime de lire quelque chose. Une traduction est une magnifique rencontre dynamique entre deux langues, deux textes, deux écrivains. Elle implique un dédoublement, un renouveau.”

“Celui qui n'appartient à aucun lieu spécifique ne peut, en réalité, retourner nulle part.”

“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.”

“You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.”

“In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists.”

“Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.”

“Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it.”

“She has the gift of accepting her life.”

“My grandfather always says that's what books are for," Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. “To travel without moving an inch.”

“Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.”

“One hand, five homes. A lifetime in a fist.”

“Sexy means loving someone you do not know.”

“Isolation offered its own form of companionship”

“Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.”

“And yet he had loved her. A Bookish girl heedless of her beauty, unconscious of her effect. She'd been prepared to live her life alone but from the moment he'd known her he'd needed her.”

“You remind me of everything that followed.”

“And yet she could not forgive herself. Even as an adult, she wished only that she could go back and change things: the ungainly things she’d worn, the insecurity she’d felt, all the innocent mistakes she made.”

“She watched his lips forming the words, at the same time she heard them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.”

“Do what I will never do.”

“That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.”

“With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether.”

“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.”

“War will bring the revolution; revolution will stop the war”

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

“She supposed that all those years of loving a person who was dishonest had taught her a few things.”

“Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated.”

“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 thought of Christmas overwhelms him. He no longer looks forward to the holiday; he wants only to be on the other side of the season. His impatience makes him feel that he is incontrovertibly, finally, an adult.”

“A woman who had fallen out of love with her life”