Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes

To have another language is to possess a second soul.

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything.

Everybody wants to say who they are and where they're from. And the easiest and cheapest and most universal way of doing that is through their accent.

I think in French, but I get angry in Spanish.

Language is our way of communicating what we want and who we are.

Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with

Language is like songs, like food, like dance-it is the expression of what we think.

Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.

Language is a social art.

If you want to know what's important to a culture, learn their language.

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.

Language is the most elementary aspect to our humanness, probably. In addition to that, it's the embodiment, it's the apotheosis of the human experience, it's the way we summarize ourselves.

I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.

Fashion is a language, for sure, and it is a reflection of society.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

The English was really my mother, it was never me. Being the daughter of my father, I always felt very French.

When people speak their own language you get a much better sense of who they are.

I used to object to being called an Indian writer, and would always say I was a writer who happened to be an Indian, and who happened to write about Indians.

I speak two languages, Body and English.

It is asked of me that I give my first speech in this house in a language [English] other than my mother tongue [French.] …. Even if I knew English as intimately as I knew French, I would still give my first speech in the language of my French Canadian compatriots

Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks.

A culture is made — or destroyed — by its articulate voices.

Every nation has its own language as well as its own temperament.

The greatest guarantee for the preservation of a person’s identity is language and faith, and all Armenians must carry these two values.

My mother is half Malayali and half Tamilian. I can speak Bengali and Tamil, but can't read or write.