Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes

There was a period when I had a hard time reconciling all the different parts of me in a way that I thought would make sense to others.

Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused.

I'm not even sure who I really am sometimes.

I have struggled with identity all my life. It's not like something that just happened last week.

I've had times in my life when I really haven't been able to figure myself out.

There are times I can't even figure myself out.

It feels weird to say there's more to me than that, like I'm being overdramatic, and a tear rolls down my cheek. But, no - I do like I feel like there's more to me than just baseball.

I don't know how happy I was when I met Sting. I always had this difficulty of not really knowing who I was.

I don't know who I am. But I do know who I'm not. I have occasionally tried playing people I'm definitely not, and that wasn't a very pleasant experience.

There are times when you don't know yourself. There are times when you don't want to know yourself. There are times when you want to be what you have never allowed yourself to be before.

I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that's not easy.

My problem was I let myself become known before I knew myself.

I think a novel has to be about where you are at a given moment in time. I think it really needs to represent some specific pain you're going through. it's not just a story.

I sometimes truly despair at ever being meaningfully altered and affected by the things I claim are so important to me.

I know that I am what I am. But I am not sure what I am.

Anybody can get lost in themselves.

When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'

One of my problems is to find the self.

One thing you can't intend is how you will be read. I hear it said a lot that my books are about the 'search for identity', and this is said admiringly, as if I meant to encourage such a search.

I am a spy in the house of me. I report back from the front lines of the battle that is me. I am somewhat nonplused by the event that is my life.

I'm asked all the time in interviews about who I am, and I know a few people my age who have a strong sense of self, but I couldn't say I know myself and sum it up and give it to you in a little package. I don't know myself at all yet.

A man is sometimes as different from himself as he is from others.

There's nothing harder than defining oneself.

The characters that I'm typically drawn to are sensitive men who are experiencing some sense of identity crisis or growth in their life that they don't know how to overcome.

I know for myself, and maybe I'm weird or whatever, but the whole thing is about constantly redefining identity.