Jhumpa Lahiri Quotes

When I saw 'Talk to Her' for the first time, I was crying out loud because I couldn't imagine that I was doing that film.

My approach to selecting a film is very simple - it should touch my heart.

I want my stories to move people ... to feel some kind of reward from the writing.

When I'm sitting writing, I know that something works if I've made myself cry, or laugh, or have a visceral emotion.

I don't cry at books or movies. Ever. So imagine my shock and awe when I read 'The Time Traveler's Wife' for the second time, and I knew the ending, and I started to cry.

There are conscious reasons and unconscious reasons why I pick something. You know, I have to be moved by the story and usually that means it has to touch me in some kind of personal place.

I consider those actors who amaze me are somehow less attractive to me than those actors who move me.

Happy music doesn't tend to move me much.

I just want to make art that connects with people and moves them on an emotional level. Any time I can put out music and place a story behind it and have people watch it and go, 'Wow, I was affected by that,' to me, feels like I've done my job.

Because of 'Wasn't Expecting That,' I've had a lot of people come up to me and say how I've written their lives or their grandparents' lives. It means the world to me that I helped in the tiniest way.

Unless I love something or hate it, I don't want to deal with it.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

I want to earn a reader's capacity to be moved.

Creating emotion was what my career was all about. I wanted people to laugh at me; I wanted people to cry with me. I wanted people to feel good or to think about something when they watched me. I think that's why, even not being an Olympic champion, I have such a huge following around the world.

I never leave a piece of theater that I love and say, 'That was a good point; They made a good point.' I leave, and I feel something.

'The Five People You Meet in Heaven' by Mitch Albom - I read it in eight hours and blubbed my eyes out when it finished. I've thought about the story every day since.

Literature speaks with everyone individually - it is personal property that stays inside our heads. And nothing speaks to us as forcefully as a book, which expects nothing in return other than that we think and feel.

I don't think you can cry if the script is rubbish. I have to feel it; it's as simple as that. It's just like if you're watching something moving, and you feel yourself welling up. It's the same thing. You're just being carried along with the story. There's nothing magical about it. I think I'm in touch with my emotions, and I can't help it.

I had a strong visceral reaction to the 'Moonlight' script, partly because I felt I knew all of these characters.

People have cried at a couple of shows. To think that someone could do that for me... Jesus Christ. That's a crazy sign.

I'm very impressionable: I get very taken away by stories and certain feelings. With writing, sometimes I want to feel like a character.

What I always do is go with the stories that put up the hair on the back of my neck or make me cry or make me laugh.

The reason I connected with music was because of the stories that people were telling and making me feel when I listened to a song.

It's the writer's job to disarm the reader of his logic, to just make the reader feel.

There were moments in 'Malala,' I felt very moved by the storytelling, and 'pleased' would be the wrong word, but the music could be part of what moved me: that I was trying to contribute to something that was meaningful outside the realm of creative work but just more in terms of the world.