All the Little Bird-Hearts Quotes

“By the time I met Vita, I existed already in a form of maternal grieving, a refusal to accept that I had somehow lost my greatest love while still living alongside her.”
― Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow, All the Little Bird-Hearts

“I had begun to notice that, just like my new friends, other people laugh about their loved ones' observance of peculiar habits, but with the same fondness of possession. She wears a coat even in the summer. He won't talk to anyone before breakfast. I realise, now, that my mother could still have loved me, if she had chosen to. It is possible to know the oddities of people and to love them regardless. I want this to comfort me, but it does not. I had always thought that I was an unloved child purely because of my peculiarities. Since Vita and Rollo and their cheerful celebration of my strangeness, I wonder if there was something else Ma witnessed in me, something that she found not simply different, but abhorrent.”
― Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow, All the Little Bird-Hearts

“Congratulations', that word that covers so many situations and that I cannot use in conversation, because it requires both substantial consideration and in-depth prior knowledge. People seem thrilled to hear it in the proper context, but this term demands an understanding of their very private desires. How can you always know that they even want the outcome for which you are congratulating them? What if they are embarrassed by the specific change and you draw uncomfortable attention to them by celebrating it? It is impossible to know another person's unspoken wants, and, conversely, to guess at their secret horrors, too.”
― Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow, All the Little Bird-Hearts

“I avoid the telephone whenever I can, using it only for short and necessary calls,”
― Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow, All the Little Bird-Hearts

“The awkwardness of being no longer exists when I am part of these other worlds and aligned with something bigger.”
― Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow, All the Little Bird-Hearts