I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.

This book was a sweet torture, at one minute you are completely thrown off course by the startling intensity of the passion described, and the next you are made to shamefully submit your desire for more by the painful shunning out through raw practicality of life. I was simultaneously crying, shouting, happy, frustrated and all the more perplexed by how the events in the story unfolded. It definitely took a heavy toll on my heart 💔

"You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven."

Hands down, the best book I read last year. With a narrative as enjoyable as fiction Harari's Sapiens is beyond recommendation, it is in fact of the "go read it asap" genre.

"What makes music beautiful is the distance between one note and another. What makes speech eloquent is the appropriate pause between words. From time to time we should take a breath and notice the silence between sounds."

The book tells the story of Jaromil and his evolution to being a poet and a human. But its nothing like The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Jaromil is heavily flawed and wrong in obvious ways. Kundera can be said to have shown exceptional courage in this honest portrayal of an artist.

Being a big fan of her's since childhood, I knew I would enjoy this. But I had no idea how much emotionally invested I was going to get with this one. Now that's a bit of a shock, a jolly good shock though.

"Who was it said that following your heart is a good thing? It is pure egotism, a selfishness to conquer all."

By portraying the protagonist as pathetically possible as she could, Hawkins's heroine is still capable of drawing attention, empathy and even relatability at times. The beauty of the fallen doesn't come through as flashy or stable, yet the straight forward nature it convey hits the chords fairly well.

"Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed".

"Magic causes as much trouble as it cures."

Funny yet insightful. Deep and dramatic. Beautifully crafted tales with very important and gravely serious critical expansions from none other than Professor Dumbledore

PS: Wizards with acute pureblood superiority complex should read with caution.

"A man with charm is an entertaining thing, and a man with looks is, ofcourse, a sight to behold, but a man with honor - ah, he is the one, dear reader, to which young ladies should flock."

"I know you despise me; allow me to say, it is because you do not understand me."

They call it an industrial 'Pride and Prejudice'. Placed somewhere between the socialist realisation of Dickens and the female oriented romantic narratives of Austen, Gaskell offers a perfect balance between so many binaries.

#elizabethgaskell #northandsouth #bbcnorthandsouth #thornton #margarethale #thorntonandmargaret