quotes by Jhumpa Lahiri

"They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

"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."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies)

"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

""Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had 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 together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.""
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

""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")"
— Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of Maladies: Stories)

"Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died... He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life... Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

"One hand, five homes. A lifetime in a fist. "
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

"For being a foreigner Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been an ordinary life, only to discover that pervious life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity of from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect. "
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

"Gogol is unaccustomed to this sort of talk at mealtimes, to the indulgent ritual of the lingering meal, and the pleasant aftermath of bottles and crumbs and empty glasses that clutter the table."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

"In the days that follow, he begins to remember things about Moushumi, images that come to him wihout warning while he is sitting at his desk at work, or during a meeting, or drifting off to sleep, or standing in the mornings under the shower. They are scenes he has carried within him, buried but intact, scenes he has never thought about or had reason to conjure up until now."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

"He tries to peel the image from the sticky yellow backing, to show her the next time he sees her, but it clings stubbornly, refusing to detach cleanly from the past."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

"She had listened to him, partly sympathetic, partly horrified. For it was one thing for her to reject her background, to be critical of her family's heritage, another to hear it from him."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

"In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another...They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end."
— Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake)

"The thought of Christmas overwhelms him. He no longer looks forward to the holiday; he wants only to be on the otherside of the season. His impatience makes him feel that he is uncontrovertibly, finally, an adult."
— Jhumpa Lahiri