I am drawn to any story that makes me want to read from one sentence to the next. I have no other criterion.
Jhumpa LahiriIt 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.
Jhumpa LahiriI'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.
Jhumpa LahiriAnd yet she could not forgive herself. Even as an adult, she wished only that she could go back and change things: the ungainly things sheโd worn, the insecurity sheโd felt, all the innocent mistakes she made.
Jhumpa LahiriGogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died...He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life...Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense.
Jhumpa Lahiri