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
(0 Reviews)

Jhumpa Lahiri's work emphasizes the crucial role language plays in establishing one's identity and presence in society. She suggests that without the ability to communicate effectively, individuals may feel invisible or powerless, lacking the respect and recognition that comes with being a part of a community. Language serves as a tool for self-expression, enabling people to assert their existence and engage meaningfully with others.

Lahiri's reflections highlight the deep connection between language and personal empowerment. When individuals are unable to articulate their thoughts and feelings, they can experience alienation and a diminished sense of self-worth. Thus, mastering a language can provide individuals with a voice that commands respect and ownership over their narrative, ultimately shaping their social reality and interactions.

Categories
language barrier
Book
In Other Words
Author
Jhumpa Lahiri
Votes
0
Page views
24
Update
February 25, 2025
Report
Report a Problem

Rate the Quote

Add Comment & Review

User Reviews

Based on 0 reviews
5 Star
0
4 Star
0
3 Star
0
2 Star
0
1 Star
0
Add Comment & Review
We'll never share your email with anyone else.
More »

Other quotes in In Other Words

Everything has to be reconsidered, shaped anew. Autobiographical fiction, even if it is inspired by reality, by memory, requires a rigorous selection, a merciless cutting. One writes with the pen, but in the end, to create the right form, one has to use, like Matisse, a good pair of scissors.
Jhumpa Lahiri In Other Words
Everything has to be reconsidered, shaped anew. Autobiographical fiction, even if it is inspired by reality, by memory, requires a rigorous selection, a merciless cutting. One writes with the pen, but in the end, to create the right form, one has to use, like Matisse, a good pair of scissors.
Why do I write? To investigate the mystery of existence. To tolerate myself. To get closer to everything that is outside of me.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. Writing is my only way of absorbing and organizing life. Otherwise it would terrify me, it would upset me too much.What passes without being put into words, without being transformed and, in a certain sense, purified by the crucible of writing, has no meaning for me. Only words that endure seem real. They have power, a value superior to us.
Jhumpa Lahiri In Other Words
Why do I write? To investigate the mystery of existence. To tolerate myself. To get closer to everything that is outside of me.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. Writing is my only way of absorbing and organizing life. Otherwise it would terrify me, it would upset me too much.What passes without being put into words, without being transformed and, in a certain sense, purified by the crucible of writing, has no meaning for me. Only words that endure seem real. They have power, a value superior to us.
But when I come out of the woods, when I see the basket, scarcely a handful of words remain. The majority disappear. They vanish into thin air, they flow like water between my fingers. Because the basket is memory, and memory betrays me, memory doesn't hold up.
Jhumpa Lahiri In Other Words
But when I come out of the woods, when I see the basket, scarcely a handful of words remain. The majority disappear. They vanish into thin air, they flow like water between my fingers. Because the basket is memory, and memory betrays me, memory doesn't hold up.
One could say that the mechanism 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 transition, in which something changes, constitute the backbone of all of us. Whether they are a salvation or a loss, they are moments that we tend to remember. They give a structure to our existence. Almost all the rest is oblivion.
Jhumpa Lahiri In Other Words
One could say that the mechanism 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 transition, in which something changes, constitute the backbone of all of us. Whether they are a salvation or a loss, they are moments that we tend to remember. They give a structure to our existence. Almost all the rest is oblivion.
The unknown words remind me that there's a lot I don't know in this world.
Jhumpa Lahiri In Other Words
The unknown words remind me that there's a lot I don't know in this world.
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
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.
More »

Other quotes in language barrier

When you live without your own language you feel weightless and, at the same time, overloaded. You breathe another type of air, at a different altitude. You are always aware of the difference.
Jhumpa Lahiri In Other Words
When you live without your own language you feel weightless and, at the same time, overloaded. You breathe another type of air, at a different altitude. You are always aware of the difference.
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
Without language you can't feel that you have a legitimate, respected presence. You are without a voice, without power.
Despite this inundation of rape imagery, where we are immersed in a rape culture-one that is overly permissive toward all manner of sexual violence-not enough victims of gang rape speak out about the toll the experience exacts. The right stories are not being told, or we're not writing enough about the topic of rape in the right ways. Perhaps we too casually use the term rape culture to address the very specific problems that rise from a culture mired in sexual violence. Should we, instead, focus on rapist culture because decades of addressing rape culture has accomplished so little?
Roxane Gay Bad Feminist
Despite this inundation of rape imagery, where we are immersed in a rape culture-one that is overly permissive toward all manner of sexual violence-not enough victims of gang rape speak out about the toll the experience exacts. The right stories are not being told, or we're not writing enough about the topic of rape in the right ways. Perhaps we too casually use the term rape culture to address the very specific problems that rise from a culture mired in sexual violence. Should we, instead, focus on rapist culture because decades of addressing rape culture has accomplished so little?
More »

Popular quotes

Taffy. He thinks about taffy. He thinks it would take his teeth out now, but he would eat it anyhow, if it meant eating it with her. Mitch Albom
All our human endeavours are like that, she reflected, and it is only because we are too ignorant to realize it, or are too forgetful to remember it, that we have the confidence to build something that is meant to last. Alexander McCall Smith
The Red Lion was a four-ale bar with a handful of lowbrowed sons of toil who looked as though they might be related to one another in ways frowned on by the Old Testament. Sebastian Faulks
The value of money is subjective, depending on age. At the age of one, one multiplies the actual sum by 145,000, making one pound seem like 145,000 pounds to a one-year-old. At seven – Bertie's age – the multiplier is 24, so that five pounds seems like 120 pounds. At the age of twenty four, five pounds is five pounds; at forty five it is divided by 5, so that it seems like one pound and one pound seems like twenty pence. {All figures courtesy of Scottish Government Advice Leaflet: Handling your Money.} Alexander McCall Smith
In fact, none of us knows how he ever managed to get his LLB in the first place. Maybe they're putting law degrees in cornflakes boxes these days. Alexander McCall Smith
Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can't explain, something that created it all at the end of the search. And no matter how far they try to go the other way – to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty – at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When the life comes to an end? I shrugged. You see? He leaned back. He smiled. When you come to the end, that's where God begins. Mitch Albom
Small towns are like metronomes; with the slightest flick, the beat changes. Mitch Albom
You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole. Mitch Albom
we get so many lives between birth and death. A life to be a child. A life to come of age. A life to wander, to settle, to fall in love, to parent, to test our promise, to realize our mortality-and, in some lucky cases, to do something after that realization. Mitch Albom
But an ink brush, she thinks, is a skeleton key for a prisoner's mind. David Mitchell
All Categories »

Categories

love
inspirational
history
soul