Michelle Gallen > Quotes

“Sometimes Majella thought that she should condense her whole list of things she wasn’t keen on into a single item: • Other People.”
― Michelle Gallen, Big Girl, Small Town

“No matter how shitty things got for a man, they were always shittier for a woman.”
― Michelle Gallen, Factory Girls

“On her First Holy Communion, Majella could remember sitting in the chapel for a long time, with Jesus stuck to the roof of her mouth, and her trying to peel him off with her tongue. Somehow she knew picking him off with her finger was all wrong.”
― Michelle Gallen, Big Girl, Small Town

“What if we accept these points of light, their translucence, their brightness; what if we let ourselves enjoy this, stop fearing it, get used to it; what if we come to believe in it, to expect it, to be impressed upon by it; what if we take hope and forgo our ancient heritage and instead, and infused, begin to entrain with it, with ourselves then to radiate it; what if we do that, get educated up to that, and then, just like that, the light goes off or is snatched away? Milkman, Anna Burns”
― Michelle Gallen, Big Girl, Small Town

“I guess failure is like posh,' Maeve said. 'Relative.”
― Michelle Gallen, Factory Girls

“Deirdre never utter another word about what a man's urges had led up to in Belfast. And Maeve - who'd learned young to obey her community's pact of silence - had never asked.”
― Michelle Gallen, Factory Girls

“The full list of things Majella wasn’t keen on extended to ninety-seven items, with subcategories for each item.”
― Michelle Gallen, Big Girl, Small Town

“Looks utterly unnatural when colored—e.g., red, orange, black”
― Michelle Gallen, Big Girl, Small Town

“Deirdre never uttered another word about what a man's urges had led up to in Belfast. And Maeve - who'd learned young to obey her community's pact of silence - had never asked.”
― Michelle Gallen, Factory Girls

“What you don’t get is I’m not even Irish– not proper Irish. I just want tae be. But all I am to the Free Staters is a dirty Northerner. I’m as pathetic as the Prods trying to be British when your lot think they’re just a pack of Paddies. You don’t want them. Them down south don’t want us. Everyone just wants us to crawl away and die some place dark where they don’t have to listen to us squealing for attention.”
― Michelle Gallen, Factory Girls