The Namesake Quotes

“Não entendo. Como vocês foram capazes de me dar o nome de uma pessoa tão estranha? Ninguém me leva a sério”, disse Gógol. “Quem? Quem não te leva a sério?”, o pai quis saber, levantando os dedos do prato, olhando para ele. “As pessoas”, ele disse, mentindo para os pais. Pois o pai tinha certa razão; a única pessoa que não levava Gógol a sério, a única pessoa que o atormentava, a única pessoa cronicamente ciente de seu nome e afligida pelo constrangimento que ele representava, a única pessoa que constantemente o questionava e queria que fosse diferente, era o próprio Gógol.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“É como se um prédio por cujo projeto ele fosse o responsável tivesse desabado na frente de todo mundo. E, no entanto, ele não pode culpá-la de fato. Ambos tinham agido pelo mesmo impulso, esse foi o erro dos dois. Ambos tinham buscado conforto um no outro e em seu mundo compartilhado, talvez porque fosse uma novidade, ou por medo de que esse mundo estivesse morrendo lentamente”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“And for the first time in his life, another man’s name upset Gogol more than his own.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“In some senses Ashoke and Ashima live the lives of the extremely aged, those for whom everyone they once knew and loved is lost, those who survive and are consoled by memory alone. Even those family members who continue to live seem dead somehow, always invisible, impossible to touch. Voices on the phone, occasionally bearing news of births and weddings, send chills down their spines. How could it be, still alive, still talking?”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“Once back on Pemberton Road, in the modest house that is suddenly mammoth, there is nothing to remind them; in spite of the hundred or so relatives they've just seen, they feel as if they are the only Gangulis in the world. The people they have grown up with will never see this life, of this they are certain.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“Their flight is at dawn and so they must leave in darkness, driving through streets so empty they are unrecognizable, a tram with its small single headlight the only other thing that moves. At the airport the row of people who had greeted them, have hosted and fed and fawned over them for all these months, those with whom he shares a name if not his life, assemble once more on the balcony, to wave good-bye. Gogol knows that his relatives will stand there until the plane had drifted away, until the flashing lights are no longer visible in the sky.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“Though they are home they are disconcerted by the space, by the uncompromising silence that surrounds them. They still feel somehow in transit, still disconnected from their lives, bound up in an alternate schedule, an intimacy only the four of them share.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“[Gogol and Sonia] call up their American friends, who are happy enough to see them but ask them nothing about where they've been. And so the eight months are put behind them, quickly shed, quickly forgotten, like clothes worn for a special occasion, or for a season that has passed, suddenly cumbersome, irrelevant to their lives.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“Like the rest of their Bengali friends, [Gogol's] parents expect him to be, if not an engineer, then a doctor, a lawyer, an economist at the very least. These were the fields that brought them to America, his father repeatedly reminds him, the professions that have earned them security and respect.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“...as they near his apartment, he leans toward the plexiglass and says to the driver, in Bengali, 'It's that one, up on the right.'
The driver turns around, surprised, smiling. 'I didn't realize,' he says.
'That's okay,' Gogol says, reaching for his wallet. He tips the driver excessively and steps out of the car.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“At restaurants and bars, they sometimes slip Bengali phrases into their conversation in order to comment with impunity on another diner's unfortunate hair or shoes.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“خارجی بودن یک جور حاملگی مادام العمر است، با یک انتظار ابدی، تحمل بار همیشگی و ناخوشی مدام، یک جور مسئولیت مدام و بی وقفه”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“[...] ser estrangeira é uma espécie de gravidez eterna - uma espera perpétua, um fardo constante, um sentimento contínuo de indisposição. É uma responsabilidade ininterrupta, um parêntese no que antes tinha sido a vida normal, apenas para descobrir que a vida anterior desapareceu, suplantada por algo mais complicado e exaustivo. [...] assim como a gravidez, ser estrangeira é algo que desperta a mesma curiosidade em estranhos, a mesma combinação de pena e respeito.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“In some senses Ashoke and Ashima live the lives of the extremely aged, those for whom everyone they once knew and loved is lost, those who survive and are consoled by memory alone.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“There is no such thing as a perfect name.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“...befriending people not so much because they like them, but because of a past they happened to share.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“...the certain absence of certain foods on their plates conjuring his father's presence somehow.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“Still, for the next three weeks, even though his new driver’s license says “Nikhil,” even though he’s sliced up the old one with his mother’s sewing scissors,”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“Without people in the world to call him Gogol, no matter how long he lives, Gogol Ganguli will, once and for all, vanish from the lips of loved ones, and so, cease to exist. Yet the thought of this eventual demise provides no sense of victory, no solace. It provides no solace at all.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“The Brothers Karamazov, and Anna Karenina, and Fathers and Sons.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake: An unforgettable historical literary fiction debut

“Y, así, esos ocho meses quedan atrás, no tardan en difuminarse, en olvidarse, como esa prenda de ropa que nos ponemos para una celebración especial o que pertenece ya a otra temporada y que con el tiempo acaba resultando engorrosa, prescindible.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, El buen nombre

“Es el típico día que parece terminar minutos después de haber comenzando y que echa por tierra los planes que tenía Ashima de hacer muchas cosas, porque la inminencia de la noche la distrae.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, El buen nombre

“Within Bengali families, individual names are sacred, inviolable. They are not meant to be inherited or shared.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“Suddenly he imagines the house where Bridget’s husband lives alone, longing for her, with his unfaithful wife’s name on the mailbox, her lipstick beside his shaving things. Only then does he feel guilty.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“These patches of disorder make no difference—it is a house too spectacular to suffer distraction, forgiving of oversight and mess.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“She has the gift of accepting her life; as he comes to know her, he realizes that she has never wished she were anyone other than herself, raised in any other place, in any other way. This,”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“She pictures clearly the gray cement floor of her parents’ sitting room, feels its solid chill underfoot even on the hottest days. An enormous black-and-white photograph of her deceased paternal grandfather looms at one end against the pink plaster wall;”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake: An unforgettable historical literary fiction debut

“Throughout the experience, in spite of her growing discomfort, she’d been astonished by her body’s ability to make life, exactly as her mother and grandmother and all her great-grandmothers had done. That it was happening so far from home, unmonitored”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake: An unforgettable historical literary fiction debut

“After a minute they continue on, toward the nurses’ station. “Hoping for a boy or a girl?” Patty asks. “As long as there are ten finger and ten toe,” Ashima replies.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake: An unforgettable historical literary fiction debut

“He was slightly plump, scholarly-looking but still youthful, with black thick-framed glasses and a sharp, prominent nose.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake: An unforgettable historical literary fiction debut