It’s time for BookBytes and I’m doing something I’ve not done before – sharing two quotes instead of one. In my defence – they share a theme, and the first one reminded me of the second.
The first is from Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, which I read recently. It’s a wonderful book – just the kind I like. It talks of a family, two families actually, and the fascinating ways the characters’ lives intertwine – the way they connect and affect each other. Here’s the quote I picked.
To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person: your child was a place, a kind of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the past you remembered and the future you longed for all at the same time. You could see it every time you looked at her: layered in her face was the baby she’d been and the child she’d become and the adult she would grow up to be, and you saw them all simultaneously, like a 3-D image. It made your head spin.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
There’s so much love in this quote. How beautifully it depicts what a child means to a parent! It reminded me of another quote from another one of my favourite books – Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. The book will remain with me forever as a bit of heartache.
“It’s just that the thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man – the galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated off-spring – you see before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been all rolled up into one.
Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
I look at him and see the baby I held in my arms, dewing besotted, unable to believe that I’d created another human being. I see the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears of fury after being bullied by some other child. I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history.”
This is perhaps why parents find it so hard to separate themselves from their children, why they forgive them so easily, why they’re ready to face the worst odds for them. In their heads they see the baby, the toddler, the teen in a grown man/woman.
Agree?
Picture Credit: Pexels
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Loved both your quotes and agree with your choice. You have summarised it all so beautifully! Unfortunately haven’t read either book. Time to make amends.
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Thank you Zephyr. I’m amazed at how authors can put into words so beautifully the exact feelings of my heart. Good writing is truly a gift and forms an instant connection.
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Oh man I was supposed to do this today. Totally slipped my mind. Keeping a reminder for next time.
Love both the books quoted from. A simple tales indeed but the writing is so beautiful that it brings in a greater depth and thought.
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That’s okay, there’s always a next time :-).
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I loved Me before You and like you rightly said, like a heartache. Both quotes are lovely. One that I would like to share on parenting that Papa first shared with me was by Kahlil Gibran – http://www.katsandogz.com/onchildren.html There is something in these words that makes me think what parents should be. 🙂
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Natasha from https://natashamusing.com/ shared it with me on one of my obsessivemom posts. It touches a nerve – that they are part of us yet unique independent individuals.
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Oh! these lines are so cute.. I stare at amazement at my boys who are now all arms and legs 🙂
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Hai na? Me too. Sometimes when N is trying to be all grown up and wise or H is offering advice I just find it funny because I cannot separate the tiny things they used to be to the teens they have now become.
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So adorable, and so very true. This also reminds me I need to get to the first book. The second one..I don’t know if I will be able to deal with the heart-break.
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I’d still say read it. It’s heartbreaking of course but most of it is positive and sweet and funny too.
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I’ve read the first book and fell in love with the parenting references. She’s done them so well! It’s fast become one of my favourite books 🙂
I’ve not read any of JoJo Moyes actually. Must get my hands on one of her books soon.
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Yup, I loved the book too, except the unresolved ending. That always niggles. If you want to read Moyes, read this one. I didn’t like the sequel so much and now I hear there’s a part three too.
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Interesting. Will bookmark this then. I actually liked the unresolved ending. Remember my flash fiction? Open ended options tickle my fancy 😁
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Yup I know. I like it in flash fiction but I invest so much emotion in a book that I want a proper end though it shouldn’t be overly neatly tied in too.
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Beautiful !!
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Thank you Priya. Glad you agree.
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