In college, I used to underline sentences that struck me, that made me look up from the page. They were not necessarily the same sentences the professors pointed out, which would turn up for further explication on an exam. I noted them for their clarity, their rhythm, their beauty and their enchantment.
Jhumpa Lahiri
Related Words can change their meaning, just by repeating them. DEYTH BANGER A lot of writers fall in love with their sentences or their construction of sentences, and sometimes... JAMES PATTERSON I look up to them. I want to follow in their footsteps. They went to college and set an example for ... OKESENE ALE I laugh at people who think their spontaneous, yet plan their spontaneous moments. SONYA.E.WILLIAMS To be poetic is how u get somebody as a girl around you... "Dexter: You seem uncertain. I... DEYTH BANGER Why do they blame me for all their little failings? They use my name as if I spent my entire days si... NEIL GAIMAN Year Up for me is a year in which the young adults that we serve have an opportunity to move up in t... GERALD CHERTAVIAN For my very first movie, 'Roger and Me,' I made it as part of my deal with Warner Brothers t... MICHAEL MOORE I am not a disbeliever in those who have told me they went to bed in the evening with an unsolved pr... DR. JEAN HANSON These days, I like to think of sentences as workers. Only one of their jobs is to look and sound goo... KAREN THOMPSON WALKER "The devil made me do it" I have never made one of them do anything. They live their own lives. I do... NEIL GAIMAN I remember when I first came out as an artist, back in 2004 or 2005, the record label used to take m... JOHN LEGEND What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a n... JONATHAN MILLER People come up to me and tell me how I changed their life and I've inspired them. And they tell ... VALERIE BERTINELLI If everyone knows their roles in the organisation, do their best in their role, then success is defi... ZENG HAN JUN In the old days in France, they had beheadings of people who commit heinous crimes, ... Nevada Newsm... OSCAR GOODMAN Don't think that this people are stupid, probably you have caught one, but you didn't finish your wo... DEYTH BANGER I would remember them forever–their names, my reasons, the way their bodies slumped in death and t... LINSEY MILLER I knew they were not very fast off their feet and that they are very foul-prone - they put you on th... PAU GASOL The most frequent complaint I hear from college students is that professors inject their leftist pol... PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY Alas, those six unfortunate souls who have made their way through my books know that every one of th... PICO IYER They called me into their office, they said their piece, I said my piece -- it was very professional... ALAN EMBREE Or maybe they just accept that it's wrong in God's eyes, although not in their own, and they'll worr... CRAIG GROESCHEL It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by peopl... EUDORA WELTY I've had no fewer than three young women on separate occasions come up to me at book signings an... DIANA GALBADON I've had no fewer than three young women on separate occasions come up to me at book signings an... DIANA GABALDON They were up for the challenge and had that look in their eye the whole game. They were really confi... BOB MARQUARDT I think professionally I admire people and the way they've handled their careers and being in th... ANNA SILK I look back at all the years that I have done this and there have been so many people who have helpe... KYLE BRADY Joe knew that for some, really for most, the derivations of belladonna that blurred their vision and... JUDITH SPENCER People are increasingly frustrated that decisions taken further and further away from them mean thei... DAVID CAMERON They said they were anhungry; sighed forth proverbs--
That hunger broke stone walls, that dogs mus... WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see... LOUISA MAY ALCOTT But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of... JHUMPA LAHIRI Our elders, and our elders’ kin, and their kin before them, fought to keep Sunningrocks in our ter... ERIN HUNTER Thirteen of the 14 past graduates came back for graduation this year to accept their scholarship cer... DEAN CHASE If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those mo... ORHAN PAMUK Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I ev... MARKUS ZUSAK By the time I’ve finished with you, you won’t know whether you’ve been kissed or cut,... WARSAN SHIRE They had from an early hour made up their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent, and the mar... HENRY JAMES Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up a... LOUISA MAY ALCOTT The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and pa... COLM TOIBIN There are a lot of companies that don't necessarily know if they can be independent companies. So a ... ANDREW SCHROEPFER Many people not only lose the benefit, but are even the worse for their mortifications [i.e., sacrif... WILLIAM LAW Two old people in a room devoid of furniture, steam rising from their teacups. They were motionless ... DAVID MITCHELL All the same, lots of women buy their clothes in Paris, and have not, on that account, necessarily p... AGATHA CHRISTIE We visit prisoners on death row, and some of them are saved, but we believe their sentences should b... JERRY FALWELL People who gosip me, made me their superior for by their actions, they've shown that they are scared... STEPHEN .R. ANYAEGBU Students often approached me about state-paid tuition while I was out campaigning. After I explained... JESSE VENTURA The same thing is to be understood of all bodies, revolved in any orbits. They all endeavour to rece... ISAAC NEWTON And if small businesspeople say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else w... PAUL RYAN If I were in the government, I would persuade the prime minister to see the beauty in the fact that ... ELIE WIESEL Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them but I can look up an... LOUISA MAY ALCOTT Obviously no country can claim a special place in God's heart, yet we are better as a people because... , COMMENDING THE NATIONAL RELIGIOUS BROADCASTERS FOR THEIR SUPPORT IN THE WAR TO DRIVE IRAQ FROM KUWAIT Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains... JEAN ROSTAND Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains t... JEAN ROSTAND Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains t... JEAN ROSTAND I believe it's time that women truly owned their superpowers and used their beauty and strength ... JANELLE MONAE I have always thought that people are, by nature, nomadic, but they’ve built up anti-human constru... JACKIE HAZE people say give up, move on but why ? They don't see you the way that I see you. They don't look int... RANA MAGDY I think that all of them must have lost their minds and have forgotten everything we were to each ot... PHILIPPA GREGORY Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eterni... BARBARA KINGSOLVER My brothers’ faces haunt me. I hear their children, my nieces and nephews, asking me why I came ho... KEVIN WALLIS I am convinced that every effort must be made in childhood to teach the young to use their own minds... ELEANOR ROOSEVELT In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my ju... JONATHAN SWIFT My dad grew up in Pittsburgh in the '50s, and he used to sing Four Seasons songs on the stoop. H... ERICH BERGEN One of the first places that they flew me to after the hurricane was San Antonio. I was separated fr... ROBERT BROWN Many, perhaps most, people who lose their jobs are mistaken about the reason for which they lost the... HARVEY MACKAY O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! / How s... BIBLE Every tree in the forest has a story to tell. Some of them were burnt but they endured the fire and ... ISRAELMORE AYIVOR It was up to them. We didn't say anything. I heard Nick get started on the bench, firing everybody u... DAVE ROWELL God expects from men something more than at such times, and that
it were much to be wished for the ... BISHOP ROBERT SOUTH God expects from men something more than at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the c... ROBERT SOUTH These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel ... POTTER STEWART Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others want them.” “I feel that other... AYN RAND From up high where I was, you could shout anything you liked at them. I tried. They made me sick, th... LOUIS-FERDINAND CELINE I wasn't able to think about them directly or summon them up in any conscious way, but as I put toge... PAUL AUSTER I used to think that my songs were the best things that I would leave behind me. And I definitely th... KRIS KRISTOFFERSON Their rebukes have never made me angry, because I have always wondered why they did not rebuke me mo... MINNIE MADDERN FISKE He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and mo... J.M. COETZEE They wanted someone there to talk to, someone who would listen to them. The other refugees - they ha... DANNY LEBLANC Their bodies were different as were the color of their eyes, the length of their noses and the circu... SHERWOOD ANDERSON I was thinking about how people seem to read the bible a lot more as they get older, and then it daw... GEORGE CARLIN I think this is something that people will welcome who are not computer-literate. We hope this helps... JOHN F. KENNEDY When I visited Vietnam for Oxfam, the thing that really struck me was how the local farmers had to p... MARTIN PARR They're definitely fired up. They made Cathedral history. All their shots were fairly long shots. Yo... DAVID GAUDE' [This means the other players will need to turn their marketing messages away from speeds and instea... SCOTT ELLISON The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste... GUSTAVE LE BON Someday they would discover that the stars were not sacred, but made from the same material as their... JAKE VANDER-ARK I would say 90 percent of them have signed. The other ones either haven't made up their mind yet, an... DAVID MEAD French women famously take care over their appearance, but this wasn't instilled in me as I grew... SONIA RYKIEL In a way, I was spoon-fed, if you will, a career. It was fully manufactured by a studio that believe... HEATH LEDGER he had had an offer for me to do television commercials for an organization that sold margarine. “... ELEANOR ROOSEVELT I think Kenny Chesney or Garth Brooks would be the coolest duet partners. I look up to them so much ... TAYLOR SWIFT Somebody will come up to me after a show and have me sign their arm, and the next time I see them my... AL YANKOVIC The villains were always ugly in books and movies. Necessarily so, it seemed. Because if they were a... NENIA CAMPBELL I look at the Samurai because they were the artists of their time. What I think struck me when I rea... TOM CRUISE I've made it clear that I have an open door policy - which means that the employee can tell me a... JOHN RAMPTON My first thought was I'm glad it wasn't me out there, ... It was intense. They kept making putt on t... KENNY PERRY I wanted to kill them. No, not kill. "Kill" is too dull a word for that which I desired. I wanted to... JUSTIN CRONIN
More Jhumpa Lahiri
The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive. JHUMPA LAHIRI Isolation offered its own form of companionship JHUMPA LAHIRI That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet. JHUMPA LAHIRI I feel partly American, but I have an ambiguous relation with both America and India, the only two c... JHUMPA LAHIRI A lot of my personality was informed by feeling very different in the world I grew up in, feeling th... JHUMPA LAHIRI The essential dilemma of my life is between my deep desire to belong and my suspicion of belonging. JHUMPA LAHIRI I think, like any artist or any writer, I just want to have that pure freedom of expression and of t... JHUMPA LAHIRI All American fiction could be classified as immigrant fiction. JHUMPA LAHIRI When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Winning the Pulitzer is wonderful and it's an honor and I feel so humbled and so grateful, but I... JHUMPA LAHIRI My parents had an arranged marriage, as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father ca... JHUMPA LAHIRI Language and identity are so fundamentally intertwined. You peel back all the layers in terms of wha... JHUMPA LAHIRI I have two young children, and I will say that motherhood is its own peak, just like in the process ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Immersing myself in Shakespeare's plays, reading them closely under the guidance of a brilliant,... JHUMPA LAHIRI In graduate school, I decide to write my doctoral thesis on how Italian architecture influenced Engl... JHUMPA LAHIRI I think it's the small things, the smaller episodes and details that I linger on and try to draw... JHUMPA LAHIRI You can't have a hit every time. The main thing is to keep on working and not be afraid to take ... JHUMPA LAHIRI He told me he was working as an interpreter in a doctor's office in Brookline, Massachusetts, wh... JHUMPA LAHIRI I think that what I have been truly searching for as a person, as a writer, as a thinker, as a daugh... JHUMPA LAHIRI This story is based on a gentleman who indeed did... used to come to my parents' house in 1971 f... JHUMPA LAHIRI I find it really liberating to be in a place where I am a foreigner in every way. I've lived wit... JHUMPA LAHIRI On the screen I saw tanks rolling through dusty streets, and fallen buildings, and forests of unfami... JHUMPA LAHIRI The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace. JHUMPA LAHIRI Language, identity, place, home: these are all of a piece - just different elements of belonging and... JHUMPA LAHIRI I've gained a lot from James Joyce, Tolstoy, Chekhov and R. K. Narayan. While writing, I try to ... JHUMPA LAHIRI It took me a long time to even dare to envision myself as a writer. I was very uncertain and hesitan... JHUMPA LAHIRI From the beginnings of literature, poets and writers have based their narratives on crossing borders... JHUMPA LAHIRI Surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a p... JHUMPA LAHIRI I speak English. I grew up speaking Bengali. This is the normal, the known, the obvious composition ... JHUMPA LAHIRI I don't know Bengali perfectly. I don't know how to write it or even read it. I have an acce... JHUMPA LAHIRI It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My n... JHUMPA LAHIRI The knowledge of death seemed present in both sisters—it was something about the way they carried ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can.You will not regret it. JHUMPA LAHIRI Writing has certain advantages; film is another way to tell a story. An experienced filmmaker will t... JHUMPA LAHIRI Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. Blindly... JHUMPA LAHIRI I think if you speak to any creative person, there's something so powerful - so intoxicating, if... JHUMPA LAHIRI On the technical side, I hope that my writing is evolving and maturing, ripening, deepening. JHUMPA LAHIRI I'm always intrigued by authors who say, 'This book took 17 drafts.' They're very cl... JHUMPA LAHIRI I have two passports because I have to have at least one, and I really don't know how I define m... JHUMPA LAHIRI I think there are a lot of misconceptions on both sides, the developing vs. the developed world, esp... JHUMPA LAHIRI I had been learning Italian for years. I always loved Latin, but Italian is a living language; I'... JHUMPA LAHIRI The urge to convert experience into a group of words that are in a grammatical relation to one anoth... JHUMPA LAHIRI Almost any American can connect on some level to a family background of having come across some ocea... JHUMPA LAHIRI It was important to me to become day-to-day fluent and functional in another language, and about 10 ... JHUMPA LAHIRI A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading. JHUMPA LAHIRI In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabl... JHUMPA LAHIRI They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book. And the phrase itself was so... JHUMPA LAHIRI He saw that his mother was dwelling in an alternate time, a more bearable reality. JHUMPA LAHIRI Each day she removes a small portion of the unwanted things in people’s lives, though all of it, s... JHUMPA LAHIRI Descartes, in his Third Meditation, said that God re-created the body at each successive moment. So ... JHUMPA LAHIRI When Deepa poured Bela some water from the urn that stood on a little stool, in the corner of the ro... JHUMPA LAHIRI She had preferred being on the plane, detached from the earth, the illusion of sitting still. JHUMPA LAHIRI Time flowed for Bela in the opposite direction. The day after yesterday, she sometimes said. Pronoun... JHUMPA LAHIRI Plato says the purpose of philosophy is to teach us how to die. JHUMPA LAHIRI Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tr... JHUMPA LAHIRI But he was no longer in Tollygunge. He had stepped out of it as he had stepped so many mornings out ... JHUMPA LAHIRI The imperfection became a mark of distinction about their home. Something visitors noticed, the firs... JHUMPA LAHIRI Writing down call numbers with short pencils, searching up and down aisles that would turn dark when... JHUMPA LAHIRI I don't know, he said, handing her the ticket. He'd been standing there all the while on the sidewal... JHUMPA LAHIRI Too much information, and yet, in her case, not enough. In a world of diminishing mystery, the unkno... JHUMPA LAHIRI Everything in Bela's life has been a reaction. I am who I am, she would say, I live as I do because ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Nor was her love for Udayan recognizable or intact. Anger was always mounted to it, zigzagging throu... JHUMPA LAHIRI There was the anxiety that one day would not follow the next, combined with the certainty that it wo... JHUMPA LAHIRI It was the English word she used. It was in English that the past was unilateral; in Bengali, the wo... JHUMPA LAHIRI ...learning was an act of rediscovery, knowledge a form of remembering. JHUMPA LAHIRI The future haunted but kept her alive; it remained her sustenance and also her predator. JHUMPA LAHIRI Most people trusted in the future, assuming that their preferred version of it would unfold. JHUMPA LAHIRI She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart an... JHUMPA LAHIRI War will bring the revolution; revolution will stop the war, JHUMPA LAHIRI With children the clock is reset. We forget what came before JHUMPA LAHIRI With her own hand she'd painted herself into a corner, and then out of the picture altogether. JHUMPA LAHIRI And yet he had loved her. A Bookish girl heedless of her beauty, unconscious of her effect. She'd be... JHUMPA LAHIRI Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tr... JHUMPA LAHIRI For that story, I took as my subject a young woman whom I got to know over the course of a couple of... JHUMPA LAHIRI In a world of diminishing mystery, the unknown persists. JHUMPA LAHIRI I've always been searching to arrive at a certain voice that will probably elude me forever. JHUMPA LAHIRI I think about the structure, sure. I think about what's going to happen, and how it's going ... JHUMPA LAHIRI But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of... JHUMPA LAHIRI On weekdays, as soon as she picked Bela from the bus stop and brought her home, she went straight in... JHUMPA LAHIRI While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new worl... JHUMPA LAHIRI Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each pe... JHUMPA LAHIRI I recently discovered the work of Giorgio Manganelli, who wrote a collection called 'Centuria,... JHUMPA LAHIRI I'm from Kingston, R.I., sort of on the University of Rhode Island campus - on the margins of th... JHUMPA LAHIRI Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so f... JHUMPA LAHIRI I love reading poetry, and yet, at this point, the thought of writing a poem, to me, is tantamount t... JHUMPA LAHIRI If certain books are to be termed 'immigrant fiction,' what do we call the rest? Native fict... JHUMPA LAHIRI If you look at my characters as a group, they all have a different relationship with the way that pl... JHUMPA LAHIRI Even printed, on pages that are bound, sentences remain unsettled organisms. Years later, I can alwa... JHUMPA LAHIRI I've inherited a sense of that loss from my parents because it was so palpable all the time whil... JHUMPA LAHIRI Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, ... JHUMPA LAHIRI Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the b... JHUMPA LAHIRI When you’re in love, you want to live forever. You want the emotion, the excitement you feel to la... JHUMPA LAHIRI You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much abo... JHUMPA LAHIRI On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a ... JHUMPA LAHIRI It imparts a certain momentum to nuclear negotiations with the US. France has played a significant r... DILIP LAHIRI There is a great deal of French interest in India now that must still be converted into action on th... DILIP LAHIRI