No more bells ringing in the middle of the afternoon demolishing the rest of the day. No more waiting for the situation to change.

— Jhumpa Lahiri

Nor was her love for Dayan recognizable or intact. Anger was always mounted to it, zigzagging through her like some helplessly mating pair of insects. Anger at him for dying when he might have lived. For bringing her happiness, and then taking it away. For trusting her, only to betray her. For believing in sacrifice, only to be so selfish in the end.

— Jhumpa Lahiri

On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, AHIMA Ganglia stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Kris pies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl.

— Jhumpa Lahiri

On weekdays, as soon as she picked Bela from the bus stop and brought her home, she went straight into the kitchen, washing up the morning dishes she'd ignored, then getting dinner started. She measured out the nightly cup of rice, letting it soak in a pan on the counter. She peeled onions and potatoes and picked through lentils and prepared another night's dinner, then fed Bela. Furthermore, she was never able to understand why this relatively challenging set of chores felt so relentless. When she was finished, she did not understand why they had depleted her

— Jhumpa Lahiri

Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it.

— Jhumpa Lahiri

Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

— Jhumpa Lahiri

She had denied herself the pleasure of openly sharing life with the person she loved.

— Jhumpa Lahiri

She had generated alternative versions of herself. She had insisted at brutal cost on these conversions. Layering her life, only to strip it bare. Only to be alone in the end. Her life had been paired down to its solitary components.

— Jhumpa Lahiri

She learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.

— Jhumpa Lahiri

...that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of secondhand pants, bought for fifty cents.

— Jhumpa Lahiri