Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes

If it has something of substance and a platform that makes sense, I can share my story. You can get a little more into my life, and I can mesh my singing with things I love to do and writing for others and telling my story in hopes of helping someone. I'm all for it.

I just know what I go through, and I know how to speak on it in an interesting way.

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

Writing is one of the most assertive things a person can do.

Words, yes, formulating things, creating something from your heart, it is something very necessary, yes.

Part of my job as Children's Laureate is to visit schools and talk about my love of books and stories and encourage them all to do it as well - to read, to write, to never be afraid of their own voice. Because we all have something to say.

The best thing about being a writer is it gives you readers who understand your deepest feelings and fears.

I'm pretty grounded on my own passion - writing books, you know, doing programs, speaking around the country. And I love what I do.

I'm always curious about anyone who has enough passion to go onstage and say, 'This is what I'm really passionate about.' It's always worth listening to.

A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.

To choose to write is to reject silence.

It was not in my nature to be an assertive person. I was used to looking to others for guidance, for influence, sometimes for the most basic cues of life. And yet writing stories is one of the most assertive things a person can do. Fiction is an act of willfulness, a deliberate effort to reconceive, to rearrange, to reconstitute nothing short of reality itself. Even among the most reluctant and doubtful of writers, this willfulness must emerge. Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying, "Listen to me."

I think I started writing because no one had ever told me you can write about the things you know in a musical. They don't have to come from some far off place.

I love being an author. I love actual writing, and I love communicating with children. And it keeps me young.

This is where I begin to do the writing. I am now going to be the pen and not the paper.

In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you can and as true to yourself as possible. You have to be honest and fair and vulnerable and foolish and brave, and not care what anyone thinks of it.

I never get sick of writing my own stories because there's a certain comfort in knowing you will never run out of material. It's relaxing, actually, to write.

If you write well, you don't have to dress funny.

I don't know, but I do think that everyone has a story to tell. The question is, can they find the voice and the confidence to tell it? We lack the encouragement as young people to believe this; we very often think that writing is for clever people, which it isn't.

What you write chooses you.

Don't be pretentious is my first advice to young writers. This is the big problem - just because you're getting an MFA doesn't mean you have to write for the Academy. Be true to your personality. Don't temper your personality down with words. Don't build defensive fortresses around yourself with words - words are your friends.

There’s a great expression in Twelve Step programs: Act as if. Act as if you’re a writer. Sit down and begin. Act as if you might just create something beautiful, and by beautiful I mean something authentic and universal. Don’t wait for anybody to tell you it’s okay. Take that shimmer and show us our humanity. That’s your job.

I want to reach people and express myself. You have to put up with the risk of being misunderstood if you are going to try to communicate. You have to put up with people projecting their own ideas, attitudes, misunderstanding you. But it’s worth being a public fool if that’s all you can be in order to communicate yourself.

And so I write the way I myself would like the book to be – if I were a child. I write for the child within me.

The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.