I try to represent specific experiences of specific characters, and that’s all I want to try to do. I don’t ever try to think about representing a culture, because its impossible, and someone will fault you. And it just doesn’t interest me. Jhumpa Lahiri Read Quote
I write about characters that interest me. And I don’t think of my books as being forms of entertainment. Jhumpa Lahiri Read Quote
They’ve lived here now for more than half of their lives, and they raised a family here and now have grandchildren here… It has become their home, but at the same time, for my parents, I don’t think either of them will ever consciously think, ‘I am an American.’ Jhumpa Lahiri Read Quote
On the technical side, I hope that my writing is evolving and maturing, ripening, deepening. Jhumpa Lahiri Read Quote
Sometimes, so much of the difficulty is the question of ‘What am I going to write about?’ because the world is so vast. Jhumpa Lahiri Read Quote
I think about the structure, sure. I think about what’s going to happen, and how it’s going to happen, and the pace. But I think if I stop to think about it in an abstract sense, I feel very daunted. I just try to enter into the story and feel my way through it. It’s a very murky, intuitive way of going about it. Jhumpa Lahiri Read Quote
I love reading poetry, and yet, at this point, the thought of writing a poem, to me, is tantamount to figuring out a trigonometry question. Jhumpa Lahiri Read Quote
I have my husband and children near me in Rome, and I feel this is where we are temporarily belonging. But personally, all my life, I have felt the absence of a sense of history. Jhumpa Lahiri Read Quote
I was always aware of what the language I was using meant in terms of my bond with my parents – how it defined the lines of affection between us. When I spoke English, I felt I wasn’t completely their child any more but the child of another language. Jhumpa Lahiri Read Quote
Surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do. Jhumpa Lahiri Read Quote
