If you are not aware, I am now a columnist in the Citizen Newspaper. There, I write book reviews every Tuesday. It has become one of my favourite things, and I look forward to it every week. I have created a reading and writing routine that brings me so much joy.
Through my writings, I hope you will discover new books, read them, and, most importantly, find some hope and kindness in my words. These words can be read in the Citizen Newspaper here. Every Tuesday, I have a new review, but you can read it anytime.
Enough about me; I am starting a new series of sharing my favourite quotes from the books I read and reviewed. I will be sharing these every Tuesday – I have become a Tuesday person (Reference to Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom)
We are starting this series with quotes from Holly Bourne’s The Places I’ve Cried in Public. This well-written book is both triggering and healing. It is about love, but it is not a love story.
The book starts at a bench – where the author, Holly Bourne, asks: can you see the girl crying? “She is not always easy to spot. She may have her head down, pretending to be on her phone, using her hair to cover her blotchy face. Or she may be leaning against the bus window, turning into the glass so you can’t see her tear.”
And here are my favourite quotes:
You never know at the time, do you? You can never know if a moment is going to make your life better or rip it apart and piss on the pieces.
Is any broken heart ever worth it?
Consistency is underrated.
I sometimes think the tears we cry are due to this huge gap between the how-things-should-go and what-life-actually-give-you.
Maybe love—real love is mellow. A slow-cooking stew is only simmering on the hob, but if you leave it long enough, the flavour deepens and deepens.
Sometimes, that’s all you can do in life when it comes to pain – try and understand it. We all carry scars and scorch marks around with us. We cuddle up each night with ghosts of damaging memories – we let them swirl around our heads, never able to settle or heal because we can’t make sense of this terrible thing that happened to us and why we’re finding it so impossible to get over. You can’t force pain to leave until it’s ready to.
The thing about undeniable truths is that the truth is never set in stone, so their deniability always has a sell-by date.
Self-hatred is like a snake that eats its own tail. It feeds off itself, the bacteria spawning more bacteria until the infection is out of control.
Abuse is being made to feel you’re going crazy. Abuse is being lured in with grand promises and wild declarations of love that can never be sustained.
Well, this is it for today. I hope these quotes speak to you. Read the full review of this book in the Citizen Newspaper here.
Like Albom’s Tuesday People, I hope to share moments that bring wisdom and connection every Tuesday.
Remember, it takes guts to listen to our gut. So, which quote spoke to you most?
Until next time,
Jane 🙂