“What is it, I wonder, that makes two people suddenly become important to each other? So important that everything else around them just fades away?”

“I cannot let a place that is so important to so many people fade away. Something that is wonder and comfort and mystery all together that they have nowhere else. If you had that, wouldn't you want to keep it?”

“Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is left after you have explained everything else.”

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

“What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone important in my life? I think that's what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by. How do you know...I felt that by walking away I was abandoning [them], that I spent my entire life, day after day, abandoning people.”

“People are always a little disconcerted when you don't recognize them, they are so important to themselves, it is a shock to discover of what small importance they are to others.[The human element]”