“Her mind is an unquiet one, words and thoughts and impulses constantly crashing into each other.”

“Like blind boys they found each other, and confirmed each other, and through the FM of the flesh they sent to one another impulses of courage and affection.”

“Lahiri's characters, just like people all around us, are constantly telling each other important things, but not necessarily in words.”

“He was, in other words, a careful man with careless impulses.”

“So you're in love with her?' she went on. A word again ... When the minds have learnt to mingle, when no thought is wholly one's own, and each has taken too much of the other ever to be entirely himself alone; when one has reached the beginning of seeing with a single eye, loving with a single heart, enjoying with a single joy; when there can be moments of identity and nothing is separate save bodies that long for one another ... When there is that, where is the word? There is only the inadequacy of the word that exists.'We love one another,' I said.”

“Thoughts of the girl crashed around his mind, made him remember the connection he felt. A sadness washed over him, as if he missed her, wanted to see her. That doesn't make sense, he thought. I don't even know her name.”