Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes

It is very enjoyable, writing a story. You get this idea. It takes hold of you. And then you spend day and night thinking about how to do it. And then you do it. And much later, you think, 'Oh, yes. That's an interesting question.'

I don't ever want to impose something on the story. I want the story to tell me.

I think about the characters I've created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did.

What comes to me always is a character, a scene, a moment. That's going to be the beginning. Then, as I write, I begin to perceive an ending. I begin to see a destination, although sometimes that changes. And then, of course, there's the whole middle section looming.

For me, novels coalesce into being, rather than arrive fully formed.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

The thing about stories is that they almost always find their way onto the page, even if it takes a while.

I look for scripts that give me a gut feeling that this is going to work.

Often what happens with the writing is that you know where you want to start and you know where you want to end, but the journey is never quite what you predict because the characters take on a life on their own.

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

I do think the challenge, in a way for me, is to write a narrative film and when you finish watching it you feel like it's a collage. You tell the narrative, you tell the story, but you feel like you've created this tapestry. But it also has a shape, a story.

The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one.

I throw everything I have into whatever story I'm writing - and so there's something immensely gratifying about finishing one piece and then starting fresh with a new setting, time period and cast of characters, getting to see the world through a completely different lens each time.

As far as personal philosophies go, I think you should know your ending. I know that's radically different from a lot of other writers who just organically like to find the story. Other than that, I try different things and mess around. I'm still just playing a good bit.

Even if I never sold another book, I'd keep writing, because the stories are here, in my head. Stories that just need to be told. I love watching a plot unfold, and feeling the surprise when the unexpected happens.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

I don't stare at a sheet of paper and try to think of a good word to use. I try to see where the story should go.

There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.

Writing a story is pretty all-consuming for me - it feels a lot like method acting, and for the eight or twelve or fifteen months that I'm working on a story, I'm constantly thinking about how my narrator would react to whatever tangled situation I'm in.

Every book is like starting over again. I've written books every way possible - from using tight outlines to writing from the seat of my pants. Both ways work.

There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

I started a second novel seven times and I had to throw them away.

I love storytelling so for me to get behind a story and get in there early in its infancy and kind of develop it in the early stages was something I really wanted to be a part of.