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Adulthood isn't black and white - it's a thousand shades of grey. Or taupe. It's not who you are, it's where you are.
Elizabeth Noble -
Life's too short, after all, isn't it? not to do the things you want - the things that make you happy? hannah had been thinking that quite a lot.
Elizabeth Noble
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He held her face in his hands, and stared into her eyes, and said that she was his for only a while anyway, and that it wasn’t his going to Cranwell that would split them up. “You’re destined for greater things, Susannah Hammond. I see it in you. You’re so clever, so bright. So beautiful. So special. I’m not any of those things. Except when I’m flying, maybe. Down here, I’m ordinary. I’m going to be just a memory for you. A sweet one, I hope. Happy. But just a part of your past. I might be good enough for now, but I’m not good enough forever. Not for you.
Elizabeth Noble -
When someone you love, dies, it’s as if they leave you with half shares of your life together. The person you were in their eyes dies with them.
Elizabeth Noble -
Amanda thought about her addiction to being on the move. about whether she was running away or running toward.
Elizabeth Noble -
I mean, I’ve always loved her, we’ve been best mates for years. When I started this thing, I thought that maybe, maybe there was something else – the germ of something else that could happen between us. But I don’t think I was entirely serious. It was speculative, you know. But, bloody hell, it’s bitten me in the arse. And now I love her. I think about her all the time. When I’m not with her, I’m just waiting for the next time I can be, and when I am, I’m just really happy. She’s funny, and smart, and.. gorgeous. I love her. Never felt like this before. Want-to-marry-her-and-be-with-her-all-the-rest-of-my-life kind of love her.
Elizabeth Noble -
They're called cliches because they're true, you know. Besides, life is quite complicated enough...
Elizabeth Noble -
However much we know about birth in general, we know nothing about a particular birth. We must let it unfold with its own uniqueness.
Elizabeth Noble
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Because parents are transients in the maternity care system, there is little cumulative birth experience over successive generations of mothers. Women giving birth don't make the same mistakes as their mothers or grandmothers-they make new ones.
Elizabeth Noble -
You women are all the same. You worry about the wrinkles and the half stone and your boobs dropping, but you don’t worry about the sparkle, and that’s the best bit. You shouldn’t let that go.
Elizabeth Noble -
Before we belonged to anyone else, we were each other's.
Elizabeth Noble -
Birth is what women do. Women are privileged to stand in such power! Birth stretches a woman's limits in every sense. To allow such stretching of one's limits is the challenge of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. The challenge is to be fully present and to allow the process because of inner trust.
Elizabeth Noble -
And there you go - i was alone, without love, for eight years. and it took me about twenty minutes - over a cappuchino and an egg salad sandwich - to fall in love with him.
Elizabeth Noble -
What was she like? She loved him, really loved him then, for an instant. this, this was easier.
Elizabeth Noble
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Wasn't there some statistic somewhere she'd read, about where most people meet their spouse, that claimed weddings were the third most popular place, after university and the work place. she was sure that she had. something to do with all that romantic optimism in the air, and too much champagne, no doubt.
Elizabeth Noble -
There should be friendship vows. Did you ever think that? When you get married, you promise all that stuff - in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer... But you do that when you're friends, too, don't you? The thick and thin stuff.
Elizabeth Noble -
She loved to stand in the middle of a market square, or a park, or a beach and take in the smells and the sounds of a world that was completely new to her. she loved being an anonymous extra in a crowd scene, like some real-life where's waldo - a tiny face, wide-eyed with wonder, in a vast, ever-changing picture.
Elizabeth Noble -
I just want my girls to have babies. that's all. so they know what i know.
Elizabeth Noble -
It contains some - not all, but some - of the things I want my daughters to know. And the greatest of these is love. please know that you had mine, unconditional, and powerful and awesome. So strong that I can't believe it will die with me. I want to imagine it as a living thing that goes beyond my body and my death, as a vine that has grown and wound its way through the very core of you all, and cannot be uprooted or destroyed, but rather will hold you erect when everything else is crumbling and withering inside you.
Elizabeth Noble -
You made new rules for the people you loved. They weren't subject to the same judgment criteria you reserved for the rest of the world. In some ways you were way easier on them, and in others, much harder.
Elizabeth Noble
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Childbirth calls into question our very existence, requiring an expectant couple to confront not only new life but death, pain, fear and, most of all, change.
Elizabeth Noble -
All this pain. all this crying. it wasn't that she hadn't expected it. she just underestimated it. it felt like a heavy, dark blanket that had been pulled across all of them. she hadn't know that it would make it difficult to breathe. she hadn't guess that it would seem so enveloping. and so total, and so permanent.
Elizabeth Noble -
Could i have loved you better? maybe. if that's true, then i'm sorry. could i have loved you more? i don't think it's possible.
Elizabeth Noble -
I'm not sure either of them had a great capacity for love, that was all. it's funny - mine feels bottomless.
Elizabeth Noble