The Namesake Quotes
"The thought of her grandmother, born in the previous century...boarding a plane and flying to Cambridge, is inconceivable to her, a thought that, no matter how welcome, how desirable, feels entirely impossible, absurd."
"She drinks in the sweet, milky fragrance of his skin, the buttery scent of his breath."
"She pictures the black iron bars in the windows of her parents' flat, and Gogol, in his American baby clothes and diapers, playing beneath the ceiling fan, on her parents' four-poster bed."
"She cries as she feeds him, and as she pats him to sleep, and as he cries between sleeping and feeding."
"She can't help wishing her own brother were here to feed him, her own parents to bless him with their hands on his head."
"It is all meant to introduce him to a lifetime of consumption, a meal to inaugurate the tens of thousands of unremembered meals to come."
"She pushes down the crib railing to comfort Gogol, who has begun stirring as a result of the telephone's rings, and reviews the facts in her head."
"She pictures her father missing a tooth, lost after a recent fall, her mother has written, on the stairs."
"She has a story to tell at dinner parties. Friends listen, amazed at her luck. 'Only in this country,' Maya Nandi says."
"Instead he tells her what Rana told him a few minutes ago, what Rana couldn't bear to tell his sister, over the telephone, himself: that her father died yesterday evening, of a heart attack, playing patience on his bed."
"I don't want to go," she says, turning toward the dark oval window. "I don't want to see them. I can't."
"What a thrill, he thinks, to stand lecturing before a roomful of American students."
"Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy—a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts."
"He has always hoped to teach in a university rather than work for a corporation."
"This is the small patch of America to which they lay claim."
"No trees grow on the property, no shrubs flank the front door, so that the cement of the foundation is clearly visible to the eye."
"It's a Russian link to her brother, it's European, South American."
"She is stunned that in this town there are no sidewalks to speak of, no streetlights, no public transportation, no stores for miles at a time."
"But Gogol knows that his relatives will stand there until the plane has drifted away, until the flashing lights are no longer visible in the sky."
"There is a reason Gogol doesn't want to go to kindergarten."
"I'm Nikhil," he says for the first time in his life.
"Nikhil," she repeats. "I've never heard that before. That's a lovely name."
"I can't believe you kissed her, Gogol," his friends exclaim.
"It wasn't me," he nearly says. But he doesn't tell them that it hadn't been Gogol who'd kissed Kim.
"In America anything is possible. Do as you wish."
"I hate the name Gogol," he says. "I've always hated it."
"There's an even scarier one in the bedroom," she says.
"You've never had a dog, have you?" Maxine says.
"It's such a bother renting a place in the city," she says.
"Why do you want to go there, of all places? What's the difference between New Hampshire and here?"
"It's a relief to be back in her world, heading north across the state border."
"There's plenty of wine in the trunk of the car," Maxine points out.
"We never got as far as India," Edith tells him.
"Have a good trip to Cleveland," he tells his father.
"The Metropolitan Museum of Art," Maxine explains.
"Everyone should live on their own at some point."
"I was not expecting you to arrive for another half an hour."
"I'm here on my own. Really, it's not that bad."
"I've been holding on for nearly half an hour."
"Ganguli," Ashima replies tartly before hanging up.
"I'm feeling better already. I'll call you when I get home."
"I think that human beings should be allowed to name themselves when they turn eighteen."
"It just feels like such a huge responsibility to name a baby."
"A little part of me wishes I'd never left Paris, you know?"
"I always check the weather by phone when I leave the house."
"She's taken the initiative for the evening, making reservations at a place in midtown, which Donald and Astrid have recommended."
"Sometimes she would sit at a restaurant alone, at the bar, ordering sushi or a sandwich and a glass of wine, simply to remind herself that she was still capable of being on her own."
"For she had been expecting an older version of the boy she remembered, distant, quiet, in corduroy jeans and a sweatshirt, a few pimples dotting his chin."
"He shakes his head. She's disappointed but not surprised."
"But now those landmarks in their courtship have faded, have given way to the occasion they are now celebrating."
"She's thankful not to have to face her desk in the corner of their bedroom first thing."
"Never again will she sit for an exam. This fact delights her—finally, a formal emancipation from studenthood."
"But it's no longer possible for her to live here now that Sonia's going to be married."
"They had both sought comfort in each other, and in their shared world, perhaps for the sake of novelty, or out of the fear that that world was slowly dying."
"It is foolish for her to hope that the golden letters spelling GANGULI on the mailbox will not be peeled off, replaced."
"And yet these events have formed Gogol, shaped him, determined who he is."