Introduction
By Jhumpa Lahiri

Writing is a way to salvage life, to give it form and meaning. It exposes what we have hidden, unearths what we have neglected, misremembered, denied. It is a method of capturing, of pinning down, but it is also a form of truth, of liberation. 18

In the end it is language itself that is the most problematic container; it holds too much and too little at the same time. 18

Book One

Chapter One

6.

regretting the past is stupid, just as it’s stupid to keep running after new beginnings. 34

Book Two

Chapter One

3.

I savored the fortune of being, for a good seventy-four years, a happy transmutation of the sidereal substance that roils in the furnace of the universe, a fragment of living thinking matter, without too many aches and pains to boot, and barely scathed, purely by chance, by misfortune. 52

Chapter Two

11.

From the crisis of many years ago we have both learned that we need to hide a great deal from each other, and tell each other even less. It's worked. 108

I'm not sure of the reasons why I behaved this way. Certainly the sport of seduction, sexual curiosity, and the impression (unfounded) that each flirtation reawakened lost creativity all played a role. 108

Book Three