Excerpted from Interpreter of Maladies, Copyright @ 1999 by Jhumpa Lahiri, Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Company soft cover, 198 page edition, ISBN 0-395-92720-X.

"How about telling each other something we've never told before." (A Temporary Matter, pg. 13)

"He had held his son, who had known life only within her, against his chest in a darkened room in an unknown wing of the hospital. He had held him until a nurse knocked and took him away, and he promised himself that day that he would never tell Shoba, because he still loved her then, and it was the one thing in her life that she had wanted to be a surprise." (A Temporary Matter, p. 22)

"What exactly do they teach you at school? Do you study history? Geography?" (When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, p. 26)

"Eventually I took a square of white chocolate out of the box, and unwrapped it...