Love Marriage

'It' s not a question of fault. Parents do the best they know how for their children. Almost all parents do. And sometimes their best efforts are damaging. We don't seek to blame, only understand. '

'In a healthy parent-child relationship, the parent's love is liberating, nourishing, nurturing. When a parent - motivated by loneliness or emptiness or a troubled marriage - makes a child a surrogate partner, the love can feel imprisoning and onerous. Suffocating... '

'I'm not just an immigration lawyer, Yasmin, I specialise in discrimination issues as well.'
'And I'm not just a doctor, I specialise in majorly fucked-up family issues as well.'

Sometimes the most important thing an addict can give up is a belief about himself.

In this room if we are sad we cry, if we are amused we laugh, if we are angry we shout or curse. As long as we don't hit each other, it's all good. Okay?

Of course it was Harriet! It was all very well for Harriet to goad Ma into talking about who knows what because the Sangsters discussed everything, but this family was different. In the Ghorami family you didn't blurt things out inconsiderably. God knows where that would lead.

'I despise it,' said Harriet, with cool relish. 'Guilt is the most useless of all the emotions, the most pathetic, the most self-involved.'