In Other Words Quotes

“The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“When the language one identifies with is far away, one does everything possible to keep it alive. Because words bring back everything: the place, the people, the life, the streets, the life, the sky, the flowers, the sounds. When you live without your own language you feel weightless and, at the same time, overloaded. Your breathe another type of air, at a different altitude. You are always aware of the difference.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“Books are the best means—private, discreet, reliable—of overcoming reality.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“Because in the end to learn a language, to feel connected to it, you have to have a dialogue, however childlike, however imperfect.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“What does a word mean? And a life? In the end, it seems to me, the same thing. Just as a word can have many dimensions, many nuances, great complexity, so, too, can a person, a life. Language is the mirror, the principal metaphor. Because ultimately the meaning of a word, like that of a person, is boundless, ineffable.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“I think that the power of art is the power to wake us up, strike us to our depths, change us. What are we searching for when we read a novel, see a film, listen to a piece of music? We are searching, through a work of art, for something that alters us, that we weren't aware of before. We want to transform ourselves, just as Ovid's masterwork transformed me.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“I just wanted to go home, to the language in which I was known, and loved.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“Reading in another language implies a perpetual state of growth, of possibility. I”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“A foreign language can signify a total separation. It can represent, even today, the ferocity of our ignorance. To write in a new language, to penetrate its heart, no technology helps. You can’t accelerate the process, you can’t abbreviate it. The”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“Should I dream of a day, in the future, when I’ll no longer need the dictionary, the notebook, the pen? A day when I can read in Italian without tools, the way I read in English? Shouldn’t that be the point of all this? I don’t think so. When I read in Italian, I’m a more active reader, more involved, even if less skilled. I like the effort. I prefer the limitations. I know that in some way my ignorance is useful to me.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“And yet she didn't want to kill herself. She loved the world too much, and people. She loved taking long walks in the late afternoon, and observing her surroundings. She loved the green of the sea, the light of dusk, the rocks scattered on the sand. She loved the taste of a red pear in autumn, the full, heavy winter moon that shone amid the clouds. She loved the warmth of her bed, a good book to read without being interrupted. To enjoy that, she would have lived forever.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“I think that translating is the most profound, most intimate way of reading. A translation is a wonderful, dynamic encounter between two languages, two texts, two writers. It entails a doubling, a renewal....It was a way of getting close to different languages, of feeling connected to writers very distant from me in space and time.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“I have only the desire. Yet ultimately a desire is nothing but a crazy need. As”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“I am the daughter of a mother who would never change...The refusal to modify her aspect, her habits, her attitudes was strategy for resisting American culture, for fighting it, for maintaining her identity...When my mother returns to Calcutta, she is proud of the fact that, in spite of almost fifty years away from India, she seems like a woman who never left.

I am the opposite. While the refusal to change was my mother's rebellion, the insistence on transforming myself is mine...All my life I've tried to get away from the void of my origin. It was the void that distressed me, that I was fleeing...Writing, I discovered a way of hiding in my characters, of escaping myself. Of undergoing one mutation after another.

One could say that the mechanisms of metamorphosis is the only element of life that never changes. The journey of every individual, every country, every historical epoch, of the entire universe and all it contains, is nothing but a series of changes, at times subtle, at times deep, without which we would stand still. The moments of transitions in which something changes, constitute the backbone of all of us. Whether they are a salvation or a loss, they are moments we tend to remember. They give a structure to our existence. Almost all the rest is oblivion.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“Without language you can't feel that you have a legitimate, respected presence. You are without a voice, without power.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“Those who don't belong to any specific place can't, in fact, return anywhere. The concepts of exile and return imply a point of origin, a homeland. Without a homeland and without a true mother tongue, I wander the world, even at my desk. In the end I realise that it wasn't a true exile: far from it. I am exiled even from the definition of exile.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“In a sense, I'm used to a kind of linguistic exile. My mother tongue, Bengali, is foreign in America. When you live in a country where your own language is considered foreign, you can feel a continuous sense of estrangement. You speak a secret, unknown language, lacking any correspondence to the environment. An absence that creates a distance within you.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“Every language belongs to a specific place. It can migrate, it can spread. But usually it’s tied to a geographical territory, a country. Italian”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“The unknown words remind me that there's a lot I don't know in this world.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“If I want to understand what moves me, what confuses me, what pains me—everything that makes me react, in short—I have to put it into words.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“It's a sort of literary act of survival. I don't have many words to express myself--rather, the opposite. I'm aware of a state of deprivation. And yet, at the same time, I feel free, light. I rediscover the reason that I write, the joy as well as the need.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“They don't understand why I want to take such a risk. These reactions don't surprise me. A transformation, especially one that is deliberately sought, is often perceived as something disloyal, threatening.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“I think it's a hesitant book and at the same time bold. A text both private and public. On the one hand it springs from my other books. The themes, ultimately, are unchanged: identity, alienation, belonging. But the wrapping, the contents, the body and soul are transfigured.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“…avevo bisogno di una lingua differente: una lingua che fosse un luogo di affetto e di riflessione. —ANTONIO TABUCCHI”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“I believe that reading in a foreign language is the most intimate way of reading.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“When I write in Italian, I think in Italian; to translate into English, I have to wake up another part of my brain. I don’t like the sensation at all. I feel alienated. As if I’d run into a boyfriend I’d tired of, someone I’d left years earlier. He no longer appeals to me.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words: A Memoir

“Why, as an adult, as a writer, am I interested in this new relationship with imperfection? What does it offer me? I would say a stunning clarity, a more profound self-awareness. Imperfection inspires invention, imagination, creativity. It stimulates. The more I feel imperfect, the more I feel alive.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“[T]hey are trying to find the right word, to choose, finally, the one that is most exact, most incisive. It's a process of sifting, which is exhausting and, at times, exasperating. Writers can't avoid it. The heart of the craft lies there.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words