Caroline

“It took them longer, a week or so, to notice the hole in their language that this new word had made. To grasp that there was no term for a parent without a child, a sister without a sister.”
― Emma Hooper, Etta and Otto and Russell and James

“If you want to know what's in motherhood for you, as a woman, then - in truth - it's nothing you couldn't get from, say, reading the 100 greatest books in human history; learning a foreign language well enough to argue in it; climbing hills; loving recklessly; sitting quietly, alone, in the dawn; drinking whisky with revolutionaries; learning to do close-hand magic; swimming in a river in winter; growing foxgloves, peas and roses; calling your mum; singing while you walk; being polite; and always, always helping strangers. No one has ever claimed for a moment that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer, and crippled by it.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

“Go do whatever, wherever. Go do it alone, and now, because you want to and you're allowed to and you can.”
― Emma Hooper, Etta and Otto and Russell and James

“I’m not sure what I’ll do, but— well, I want to go places and see people. I want my mind to grow. I want to live where things happen on a big scale.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Ice Palace and Other Stories