Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes

One of the main reasons I write fiction is to try to understand what life is like for people other than myself, to try to see the world through my characters' eyes. I often find that I'm able to understand certain emotional truths about my own life by exploring things from different vantages.

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own.

I think that's one of the most important things that books do: not to teach you anything, but to help you teach yourself by just being in the world of the book and having your own thoughts and reactions and noticing your own reactions and thoughts and learning about yourself that way.

One of the fantastic things about books, fiction or non-fiction, is the way they give you a chance to look into different lives.

Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are.

When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.

Literature allows us to be open, to listen, and to be curious.

We read to find life, in all its possibilities.

I've always thought that a good book should be either the entry point inward, to learn about yourself, or a door outward, to open you up to new worlds.

Books are our umbilical cord to life. They connect us deeply, and with more meaning, to the world. They aren't about escaping from ourselves but expanding ourselves and finding within us the tools we need to survive.

That's why people read books. You get to have the real conversation, as opposed to the pseudo-conversations we have in everyday life.

The part of my education that has had the deepest influence wasn't any particular essay or even a specific class, it was how I was able to apply everything I learned in the library to certain situations in my life. . . The library takes me away from my everyday life and allows me to see other places and learn to understand other people unlike myself.

You can travel through literature, and you can expand your mind through literature. It's so cheap to buy that kind of ticket.

Learn something new. Try something different. Convince yourself that you have no limits.

As a kid books changed how I looked at the world and helped me understand things. Books still deepen me and open my heart.

Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

I wanted to become an artist because it meant endless possibilities. Art was a way of reinventing myself.

Libraries are where we learn that we can live our lives through books.

Learning never exhausts the mind.

Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me. Books saved me. So, I do believe through stories we can learn to change, we can learn to empathize and be more connected with the universe and with humanity.

What's in front of you is a whole world of experiences beyond your imagination. Put yourself, and your growth and development, first.

I'm constantly learning, and that is the greatest gift of life in my opinion - to always be learning and growing.