and the three thousand pages of In Search of Lost Time took him five committed summers to finish. And on that fifth summer, when he was lying abed in a friend’s Cape Cod house one afternoon, about two-thirds of the way through the last
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“If there was one thing I feared as I was growing up . . .
No, that's stupid. I feared hundreds of things: the dark, the death of my father, the possibility that I might rejoice the death of my mother, sums involving vernier calipers, groups of schoolboys with nothing much to do, death by drowning.
But of all these, I feared the most the possibility that I might go mad too.”
― Em and The Big Hoom
No, that's stupid. I feared hundreds of things: the dark, the death of my father, the possibility that I might rejoice the death of my mother, sums involving vernier calipers, groups of schoolboys with nothing much to do, death by drowning.
But of all these, I feared the most the possibility that I might go mad too.”
― 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

“To love someone is like moving into a house," Sonja used to say. "At first you fall in love in everything new, you wonder every morning that this is one's own, as if they are afraid that someone will suddenly come tumbling through the door and say that there has been a serious mistake and that it simply was not meant to would live so fine. But as the years go by, the facade worn, the wood cracks here and there, and you start to love this house not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not. You become familiar with all its nooks and crannies. How to avoid that the key gets stuck in the lock if it is cold outside. Which floorboards have some give when you step on them, and exactly how to open the doors for them not to creak. That's it, all the little secrets that make it your home.”
― A Man Called Ove
― A Man Called Ove
Niyatee’s 2024 Year in Books
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