“I wish more Italian literature were translated and read in English. I'...” — Jhumpa Lahiri Quote

“I wish more Italian literature were translated and read in English. I've discovered so many extraordinary and diverse writers: Lalla Romano, Carlo Cassola. Beppe Fenoglio, Giorgio Manganelli, just to name a few.”

“I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.”

“The Italians always know that I'm not Italian.”

“I don't know Bengali perfectly. I don't know how to write it or even read it. I have an accent, I speak without authority, and so I've always perceived a disjunction between it and me. As a result, I consider my mother tongue, paradoxically, a foreign language.”

“For years, I sort of would try to write a story that somehow fit the title. And I don't think it happened for maybe another four years that I actually thought of a story, the plot of a story that corresponded to that phrase.”

“I feel that Italy's a country that's constantly looking out and constantly following what's happening in other cultural centers. What is being written in America, what is being published in England, what is being published in France. It's a culture that's always wanting to absorb and inform itself of other works, other writers, etc., etc.”

“Before I discovered moviemaking, I hadn't found anything where I could kind of galvanize or meld all of the things that I wanted to do.”

“I discovered philosophy in my youth when I read 'wildly,' and thus I was exposed to the world of ideas.”

“I was the little French boy who grew up hearing people talk of De Gaulle and the Resistance. France against the Nazis! Then when that boy grew up, he began to uncover things. We began to legitimately ask the question, 'What exactly did our parents do during the Occupation?' We discovered it was not the story they were telling us.”

“I've always been very private, maybe because I discovered my mother, who is a wonderful lady, is very emotional.”

“I've discovered I've got this preoccupation with ordinary people pursued by large forces.”

“My hair was slicked down with a part. But that was before I discovered the blow-dryer. Now I'm fabulous.”