But she’d said so kindly because she knew that, mistaken as Ian and Lucie had been in assuming she could be everything to everyone, all they really wanted was for the kids to have the opportunity to know others like them.
“Love is a hollow word which seems at home in song lyrics and greeting cards, until you fall in love and discover it’s disconcerting power. Depression means nothing more than the blues, commercially packaged angst, a hole in the ground; until you find it’s black weight settled inside your mother’s chest, disrupting her breathing, leaching her days, and yours, of colour and the nights of rest.”
― Em and The Big Hoom
― Em and The Big Hoom
“Marriage is all right. At least the person you’re having a go at is an adult. But motherhood… You’re given something totally dependent, totally in love with you and it doesn’t seem to come with a manual.”
― Em and The Big Hoom
― Em and The Big Hoom
“I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to deal with the world. It seemed too big and demanding and there was no fixed syllabus.”
― Em and The Big Hoom
― Em and The Big Hoom
“You can cry in public as long as you don not sob. Tears are transparent. If you’re walking fast, if the sun’s too strong, no one notices. Sobs intrude. They push their way into people’s consciousness. They feel duty-bound to ask what has happened.”
― Em and The Big Hoom
― Em and The Big Hoom
“Love is never enough. Madness is enough. It is complete, sufficient unto itself. You can only stand outside it as a woman might stand outside a prison in which her lover is locked up. From time to time, a well-loved face will peer out and love floods back. A scrap of cloth flutters and it becomes a sign and a code and a message and all that you want it to be. Then it vanishes and you are outside the dark tower again.”
― Em and The Big Hoom
― Em and The Big Hoom
Niyatee’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Niyatee’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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