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 More Quotes by Jhumpa Lahiri More Quotes From Jhumpa Lahiri Many of my characters struggle with loneliness, that is fair to say. Jhumpa Lahiri fair say loneliness struggle Immersing myself in Shakespeare's plays, reading them closely under the guidance of a brilliant, plain-spoken professor changed my life: It opened up the great questions; it put my petty problems into perspective. It got me out of bed in the mornings and kept me in the library late into the night. Jhumpa Lahiri my-life myself me life I speak English. I grew up speaking Bengali. This is the normal, the known, the obvious composition of who I am. Then there's Italian, this strange, other component of me that I've just created. It was a creative process just to learn the language, never mind to start expressing myself in it. Jhumpa Lahiri i-am myself me mind American? Indian? I don't know what these words mean. In Italy, it is all about blood, family, where you come from. I'm asked where I am from. I'm from nowhere; I always was, but now I am happy knowing it. Jhumpa Lahiri i-am you family happy I've always been searching to arrive at a certain voice that will probably elude me forever. Jhumpa Lahiri will me always voice I think there are a lot of misconceptions on both sides, the developing vs. the developed world, especially about America. I've felt the frustration in my lack of belonging to any one place, but I've also felt it liberating to be able to appreciate something without feeling disloyal to my own culture. Jhumpa Lahiri feeling think culture world I think that what I have been truly searching for as a person, as a writer, as a thinker, as a daughter, is freedom. That is my mission. A sense of liberty, the liberty that comes not only from self-awareness but also from letting go of many things. Many things that weigh us down. Jhumpa Lahiri down think daughter freedom The essential dilemma of my life is between my deep desire to belong and my suspicion of belonging. Jhumpa Lahiri deep my-life desire life I don't know Bengali perfectly. I don't know how to write it or even read it. I have an accent, I speak without authority, and so I've always perceived a disjunction between it and me. As a result, I consider my mother tongue, paradoxically, a foreign language. Jhumpa Lahiri me language speak mother Almost any American can connect on some level to a family background of having come across some ocean. They say, 'My great-grandparents came from wherever... this is why we have this last name, why we do this thing at Christmas.' All the details get watered down but don't quite disappear. Jhumpa Lahiri name family ocean christmas When I write a book, characters come to life for me somewhere at the back of my head. I strive to make them flesh and blood in an abstract way, in words. Jhumpa Lahiri words me life book I think if you speak to any creative person, there's something so powerful - so intoxicating, if you will - about discovering another voice, another instrument, another way of looking at things, another way of perceiving things. Jhumpa Lahiri looking think you speak A lot of my personality was informed by feeling very different in the world I grew up in, feeling that I didn't fully belong, that my parents didn't belong. Jhumpa Lahiri parents feeling personality world He told me he was working as an interpreter in a doctor's office in Brookline, Massachusetts, where I was living at the time, and he was translating for a doctor who had a number of Russian patients. On my way home, after running into him, I just heard this phrase in my head. Jhumpa Lahiri doctor me home time Winning the Pulitzer is wonderful and it's an honor and I feel so humbled and so grateful, but I think that I'll think of it very much as the final sort of final moment for this book and put it behind me along with the rest of the book, as I write more books. Jhumpa Lahiri feel me moment grateful I've always had this feeling wherever I go. Of not feeling fully part of things, not fully accepted, not fully inside of something. Jhumpa Lahiri inside feeling go always Many of the novelists I admire never left their hometown. Look at Flannery O'Connor. So many of the great Russians never left Russia. Shakespeare never left England. The list goes on. Jhumpa Lahiri never great look hometown I feel my writing comes from a desire to... well, it's motivated by many things, but it's inherently a contradiction in that I'm writing for myself, and it's a very interior journey. On the other hand, I feel that writers do make that interior journey out of a desire to connect. Jhumpa Lahiri feel myself journey writing
