The Little Venice Bookshop Quotes

“Sometimes I wonder if I really know myself at all or if I’m just playing a part”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“But internally I rail, I choke, I scream at the thought of being left behind. There’s a feeling of abandonment. Maybe it stems from not getting to see her one last time. To kiss her soft pillowy cheek. To tell her what she meant to me.”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“I knew Gigi would understand. My life started here, in Thailand. In a small commune run by women, for women. They say it takes a village to raise a child and that’s what I had. A whole village of like-minded women who looked out for one another and their offspring. Until the next adventure beckoned on the balmy breeze, and with babes strapped to their chests they followed their hearts and kept roaming. The communes are long since gone. Those beautiful barefoot women with a baby on a breast are now elsewhere. They were ahead of their time with their wildness, their sense of adventure … ‘Now Mom’s only battle is beating cancer. But she’s got her apothecary for that, and she’s winning. Every day she gets that little bit stronger.’ A year ago, she gave me the news of her diagnosis. Mom told me not to cut my travels short and rush home. It was under control. While Mom might be the best healer there is, she doesn’t like being the coddled patient. Still, she’s my everything, so rush home I did. I stayed for a few weeks and saw with my very own eyes that she was getting”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“I will suffer alone in the morning damp of these lonely Venetian streets in order for love to blossom.”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“Life is what you make it, and what we learned today in that magical little canal bookshop is that books are there for you when you need comfort, and they’ll always be there. Their pages might be yellowed with age, dog-eared, with notes in the margins, or a birthday scrawl in the front, but that’s what makes them special.”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“Filmy light landed on piles of books; it was like going back in time. And for a moment I could breathe again, I felt inspired in only the way you can be when you’re surrounded by books.”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“the proudest moment for me as a mother was when Bella used to spend all her pocket money on books. I knew then I’d done my job well enough. If a child loves reading, they’ll never be alone. Even when the hard times come – and they always come – they’ll have a tonic for it. They’ll have a place to escape.”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“I love reading. Love bookshops. Novels are like a portal into another world. No matter what’s happening in my life, I know I can always escape into the pages of a book and forget my troubles for a while. Reading is like therapy and you don’t need great sums of cash to access books.”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“This sudden shock to my system feels almost like my death too. A part of me is blackened, charred, dead. With no warning, no word, I’m suddenly untethered. The thread that binds us is broken. It doesn’t exist anymore and how can that be?”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“Sometimes you don’t get to choose who your family is, they choose you”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“Despite being a little worn, a little scarred. Aren’t we all? And it’s those dings and dents that make our own stories so great, so rich and varied: the tapestry of our own disordered messy live that got us here, to this very point”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“Before, I felt like I had a piece missing, and now I see that … it was finding where I fit into the tapestry of the world myself”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“like I’ve just found home. And maybe I have. Maybe home finds you, and not the other way round”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop

“He called her his farfalla and I wonder if he meant that she flits from flower to flower or meant something deeper, a caterpillar who grows beautifully patterned wings, like a woman who discovers her own power and chooses independence and flies into the sun”
― Rebecca Raisin, The Little Venice Bookshop