“But it takes so little to help people, and people really do help each other, even people with very little themselves. And it’s not just about second chances. Most people deserve an endless number of chances.”

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

“That's one of the amazing things great books like this do - they don't just get you to see the world differently, they get you to look at people, the people all around you, differently.”

“Everyone doesn't have to do everything," she told me. "People forget you can also express yourself by what you choose to admire and support. I've had so much pleasure from beautiful and challenging things created by other people, things I could never make or do. I wouldn't trade that for anything.”

“...two different kinds of Japanese psychotherapies, one based on getting people to stop using feelings as an excuse for their actions and the other based on getting people to practice gratitude.”

“He was the smartest and best-read person any of us had every known, but he wore his learning so lightly and had such curiosity about other people that he had the ability to make everyone around him feel smart and well-read.”

“I often forget that other people's stories aren't simply introductions to my own more engaging, more dramatic, more relevant, and better-told tales, but rather ends in themselves, tales I can learn from or repeat or dissect or savor.”