For years, I sort of would try to write a story that somehow fit the title. And I don't think it happened for maybe another four years that I actually thought of a story, the plot of a story that corresponded to that phrase.
quote by Jhumpa Lahiri
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I can't tell you exactly how I found it. It was just a process of writing a lot of stories and reading a lot of stories that I admired and just working and working until the sentences sounded right and I was satisfied with them.
quote by Jhumpa Lahiri
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
I've seen novels that have grown out of one story in a collection. But it hasn't occurred to me to take any of those stories and build on them. They seem very finished for me, so I don't feel like going back and dredging them up.
quote by Jhumpa Lahiri
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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.
quote by Jhumpa Lahiri
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
You know, since the reviews have come out and people have reacted to it, I've realized that is in a sense what has happened. But as I was writing them, I didn't feel a part of any tradition. I think that would have been too overwhelming, in a sense.
quote by Jhumpa Lahiri
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
This story is based on a gentleman who indeed did... used to come to my parents' house in 1971 from Bangladesh. He was at the University of Rhode Island. And I was four, four years old, at the time, and so I actually don't have any memories of this gentleman.
quote by Jhumpa Lahiri
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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.
quote by Jhumpa Lahiri
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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.
quote by Jhumpa Lahiri
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
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.
quote by Jhumpa Lahiri
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!