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It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different. I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different. ↗

— Jhumoa Lahiri

#being #being different #clothes #different #i

My parents had an arranged marriage, as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one way and my mother had a different one, and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it, and I will continue to write about it. ↗

— Jhumoa Lahiri

#arranged #aware #came #continue #did

At 6:30, which was when the national news began, my father raised the volume and adjusted the antennas. Usually I occupied myself with a book, but that night my father insisted that I pay attention. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#attention #began #book #father #i

For that story, I took as my subject a young woman whom I got to know over the course of a couple of visits. I never saw her having any health problems - but I knew she wanted to be married. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#couple #course #got #having #health

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose. ↗

— John Mason Brown

#happiness #only #ourselves #purpose #squandering

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 #had #head #heard #him

I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#always #felt #first #had #i

I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#device #i #i think #kind #projecting

I've inherited a sense of that loss from my parents because it was so palpable all the time while I was growing up, the sense of what my parents had sacrificed in moving to the United States, and yet at the same time, building a life here and all that that entailed. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#building #entailed #growing #growing up #had

I've never had Internet access. Actually, I have looked at things on other people's computers as a bystander. A few times in my life I've opened email accounts, twice actually, but it's something I don't want in my life right now. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#accounts #actually #computers #email #few