Aysha’s Reviews > The Bigness of the World > Status Update

"he had liked his aunt, who wore fringe and waited until both of his parents were out of the room to say, “Harold, I’m deeply sorry about your name. I should have tried to stop them.”" LOL

"Women who have spent their entire lives reading, engaged in the world of heroes and plots, foreshadowing and epiphanies, and, perhaps without even realizing it, they had come to expect that life would follow literary extremes"

"Clichés are a speaker’s convenience, a linguistic shortcut uttered, in most cases, entirely without thought and received in the same fashion. Th ey are like mosquitoes, ubiquitous and annoying but ultimately harmless. A proverb, however, is much stealthier: like the bite of a snake, it is meant to change a life."

"I do not buy into this idea that one learns more from literature that is familiar; in fact, it seems only logical that one would learn most from subject matter that one has not already mastered through the daily grind of one’s existence."

"Later, before she became an adult, when she was still a sporadically pensive teenager, she had arrived at a theory that somehow made her feel better, useful even. She had decided that each family has a member whose absence rounds out the family far more than his or her presence ever could."

“Our parents’ kitchen had not one island but two, which Ilsa had given names. The one nearest the stove she called Jamaica and the other, Haiti, and when we helped her cook, she would hand us things, saying, “Ferry this cutting board over to Haiti,” and “Tomatoes at the south end of Jamaica, please.”
I’m dying 😂😂😂😭😭😭

“Why, it is a marvelous thing to be a sissy, Martin. You will enjoy your life much more than those boys. You will be able to cook and enjoy flowers and appreciate all sorts of music. I absolutely adore sissies.”
I fucking love Ilsa.