Whereabouts Quotes

“Solitude: it's become my trade. As it requires a certain discipline, it's a condition I try to perfect. And yet it plagues me, it weighs on me in spite of my knowing it so well.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“What did I do? I read books and studied. I listened to my parents and did what they asked me to. Even though, in the end, I never made them happy. I didn’t like myself, and something told me I’d end up alone.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“You always wanted calm seas. You used to claim you got along with everyone, that you kept to yourself, that you needed nothing from no one. But one can’t ask the sea to never swell into rage. And you asked a great deal from me.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“In the pool I lose myself. My thoughts merge and flow. Everything—my body, my heart, the universe—seems tolerable when I’m protected by water and nothing touches me. All I think about is the effort. Below my body there’s a restless play of dark and light projected onto the bottom of the pool, that drifts away like smoke.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“Because when all is said and done the setting doesn’t matter: the space, the walls, the light. It makes no difference whether I’m under a clear blue sky or caught in the rain or swimming in the transparent sea in summer. I could be riding a train or traveling by a car or flying in a plane, among the clouds that drift and spread on all sides like a mass of jellyfish in the air. I’ve never stayed still, I’ve always been moving, that’s all I’ve ever been doing. Always waiting either to get somewhere or to come back. Or to escape. I keep packing and unpacking the small suitcase at my feet. I hold my purse in my lap, it’s got some money and a book to read. Is there any place we’re not moving through? Disoriented, lost, at sea, at odds, astray, adrift, bewildered, confused, uprooted, turned around. I’m related to these related terms. These words are my abode, my only foothold. On the Train There are five of them, four men and a woman, all more or less the same age.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“Solitude demands a precise assessment of time, I’ve always understood this. It’s like the money in your wallet: you have to know how much time you need to kill, how much to spend before dinner, what’s left over before going to bed.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“Is there any place we’re not moving through? Disoriented, lost, at sea, at odds, astray, adrift, bewildered, confused, uprooted, turned around. I’m related to these related terms. These words are my abode, my only foothold.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“Every time my surroundings change I feel enormous sadness. It’s not greater when I leave a place tied to memories, grief, or happiness. It’s the change itself that unsettles me, just as liquid in a jar turns cloudy when you shake it. —italo svevo, essays and uncollected writings”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“There’s no escape from the shadows that mount, inexorably, in this darkening season. Nor can we escape the shadows our families cast. That said, there are times I miss the pleasant shade a companion might provide.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“The city doesn't beckon or lend me a shoulder today. Maybe it knows I'm about to leave. The sun's dull disk defeats me; the dense sky is the same one that will carry me away. The vast and vaporous territory, lacking precise pathways, is all that binds us together now. But it never preserves our tracks. The sky, unlike the sea, never holds on to the people that pass through it. The sky contains nothing of our spirit, it doesn't care. Always shifting, altering its aspect from one moment to the next, it can't be defined.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“Each revelation was devastating. Everything she said. And yet, even as my life shattered in pieces, I felt as if I were finally coming up for air.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“I might have said no, I might have just stayed put. But something’s telling me to push past the barrier of my life,”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“I'm flummoxed by this unraveling of time, I'm losing my grip on myself. I know that nothing awful will happen on the other side of the door. If anything, I'm about to have a perfectly forgettable day: a class to teach, a meeting with colleagues, maybe a movie. But I'm afraid of forgetting something crucial—my cell phone or my identity card, my health insurance or my keys. And I'm afraid of running into trouble.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“The sky, unlike the sea, never holds on to the people that pass through it. The sky contains nothing of our spirit, it doesn’t care. Always shifting, altering its aspect from one moment to the next, it can’t be defined.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“I look for a place to sit and find a spot in the playground where they deal drugs are night, but at this time of day it’s bursting with kids, parents, dogs, also a few people on their own like me. But today I don’t feel even slightly alone. I hear the babble of people as they chatter, on and on. I’m amazed at our impulse to express ourselves, explain ourselves, tell stories to one another. The simple sandwich I always get amazes me, too. As I eat it, as my body bakes in the sun that pours down on my neighbourhood, each bite, feeling sacred, reminds me that I’m not forsaken.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“Portagioie, the Italian word for jewelry box, is a compound of two polyvalent words. Gioia (pl. gioie) means both “joy” and “jewel.” Porta, meanwhile, derives from the Latin verb portāre, and belongs to a constellation of words pertaining to acts of bearing, bringing, carrying, and transporting, which in turn give rise to terms for “door,” “gate,” and “port.” Portagioie, therefore, could also be interpreted, in Italian, not only as a box of jewels, but a container of joy, a doorway or gateway to joy, something that brings joy.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“I’m amazed at our impulse to express ourselves, explain ourselves, tell stories to one another.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“But it’s not just my eyes that suffer at dawn, it’s my heart that breaks. I feel the light that blazes across the city, striking my face but also warming my marrow, and as it rises I continue to look at my neighbors’ laundry, threadbare and bone-dry. Then I close my eyes so that I see the light through my eyelids, and I regret being typically sluggish and missing out on this extraordinary, everyday phenomenon”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“When you change houses you always lose something. Every move betrays you, it always cheats you somehow. I’m still looking for certain things. That brooch that belonged to my mother, nothing valuable, but it meant something to me. Then there’s my old address book. Even though I don’t need it anymore, I liked thumbing through it now and then. I’d saved ticket stubs, certain receipts, a small photograph of your father when he was young, before we’d met, what a handsome fellow he was. I look and look but I can’t find it. There are days I comb through the whole house hoping to find those things in some drawer I’ve already opened countless times, or maybe at the bottom of a box in my closet. They’re somewhere, of course. Just like the jewels that were stolen from me. Remember that ring, the gold one, a little flashy, that I liked to wear in winter? It had green stones. I’d left it lying in plain sight when I was younger, when there was always so much to do in the course of any given day. Back then it tormented me, I couldn’t stand the fact of having lost that ring. But now I think, oh well. Someone else is probably wearing it, or maybe it’s for sale somewhere, in some far-off place, maybe the place you’re going to. It’s not mine anymore, but it’s still somewhere, that’s what I’m trying to say.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“He was a hermit; true peace, for him, meant staying indoors, staying put in a familiar place.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“There’s no point discussing it given that she’s blind to the small pleasures my solitude affords me. In spite of how she’s clung to me over the years my point of view doesn’t interest her, and this gulf between us has taught me what solitude really means.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“I grow sad looking at all those brand-new suitcases, all of them empty, waiting for a traveler, waiting for various things to fill them, waiting for someplace to go.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“After I look at her I look at myself in the mirror, and yet again I resign myself to the fact that my face has always disappointed me. Every look in the mirror dismays me, that's the reason I tend to avoid them.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“You, who chafed at the collective we created, who only wanted to subtract yourself, always, from the equation, throwing it off-balance.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“Though we’re crowded together I feel separate from the group, excluded from their enduring, unquestioned bonds. On the other hand, I feel obligated to pay attention to people I barely know. I feel a bit off physically as well. I’m making an effort just to sit here, and I’m oddly aware of the weight of my head on my neck. There’s nothing in my throat but I’m convinced something is blocking it all the same. I take a breath and observe that my stomach rises and falls, but my chest feels clamped, I need to get out, get some fresh air.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“this oasis of objects, this ongoing flow of goods, reminds me that everything vanishes, and also reminds me of the banal, stubborn residue of life”
― Lahiri Jhumpa, Whereabouts

“The idea of spending money, of buying myself something lovely but unnecessary, has always burdened me. Is it because my father would scrupulously count out his coins, and rub his fingers over every bill before giving me one in case there was another stuck to it? Who hated eating out, who wouldn't order even a cup of tea in a coffee bar because a box of tea bags in the supermarket cost the same? Was it my parents' strict tutelage that prompts me to always choose the least-expensive dress, greeting card, dish on the menu? To look at the tag before the item on the rack, the way people look at the descriptions of paintings in a museum before lifting their eyes to the work?”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“Igo visit you, too, Papà. I bring you flowers and I hear you ask me, what’s the point of these? Here you are, in the heart of the city, surrounded by the dead: all those souls still wreathed and garlanded, lined up like boxes in the post office. You always occupied your own space. You preferred dwelling in your own realm, closed off. How can I link myself to another person when I’m still struggling, even after your death, to eliminate the distance between you and my mother, the”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“As disappointed as I am, I’m not surprised that my beloved stationery store no longer exists, the rents must be sky-high around here, and furthermore, who buys notebooks in the end? My students can barely write by hand, they press buttons to learn about life and explore the world. Their thoughts emerge on screens and dwell inside clouds that have no substance, no shortage of space.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts

“I pack a bag and catch a train from the central station. I stare up at all the destinations one might go, listed on the big board, and I think of all the places I might still visit, and how arbitrary one’s own path is.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts