Claire Keegan > Quotes

“As they carried along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“Many's the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“It seemed both proper and at the same time deeply unfair that so much of life was left to chance.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“Why were the things that were closest so often the hardest to see?”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“Before long, he caught a hold of himself and concluded that nothing ever did happen again; to each was given days and chances which wouldn’t come back around. And wasn’t it sweet to be where you were and let it remind you of the past for once, despite the upset, instead of always looking on into the mechanics of the days and the trouble ahead, which might never come.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“The worst was yet to come, he knew. Already he could feel a world of trouble waiting for him behind the next door, but the worst that could have happened was also already behind him; the thing not done, which could have been – which he would have had to live with for the rest of his life.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another?”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“It was easy to understand why women feared men with their physical strength and lust and social powers, but women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“Always it was the same, Furlong thought; always they carried mechanically on without pause, to the next job at hand. What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over things? Might their lives be different or much the same – or would they just lose the run of themselves?”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“He thought of Mrs Wilson, of her daily kindnesses, of how she had corrected and encouraged him, of the small things she had said and done and had refused to do and say and what she must have known, the things which, when added up, amounted to a life. Had it not been for her, his mother might very well have wound up in that place. In an earlier time, it could have been his own mother he was saving – if saving was what this could be called. And only God knew what would have happened to him, where he might have ended up.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“My heart feels not so much in my chest as in my hands. I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside me.”
― Claire Keegan

“What was it all for? Furlong wondered. The work and the constant worry. Getting up in the dark and going to the yard, making the deliveries, one after another, the whole day long, then coming home in the dark and trying to wash the black off himself and sitting into a dinner at the table and falling asleep before waking in the dark to meet a version of the same thing, yet again. Might things never change or develop into something else, or new?”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.”
― Claire Keegan

“Neither one of us talks, the way people sometimes don’t when they are happy – but as soon as I have this thought, I realise its opposite is also true.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“People could be good, Furlong reminded himself, as he drove back to town; it was a matter of learning how to manage and balance the give-and-take in a way that let you get on with others as well as your own. But as soon as the thought came to him, he knew the thought itself was privileged and wondered why he hadn’t given the sweets and other things he’d been gifted at some of the houses to the less well-off he had met in others. Always, Christmas brought out the best and the worst in people.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“Where does thinking get us?’ she said. ‘All thinking does is bring you down.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“She wants to find the good in others, and sometimes her way of finding that is to trust them, hoping she’ll not be disappointed, but she sometimes is.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“— Everything changes into something else, turns into some version of what it was before.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“He thought of Mrs Wilson, of her daily kindnesses, of how she had corrected and encouraged him, of the small things she had said and done and had refused to do and say and what she must have known, the things which, when added up, amounted to a life.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“Eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what is coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“Maybe the way back will somehow make sense of the coming.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“This water is cool and clean as anything I have ever tasted; it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over things.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“What it is to be a man,’ she said, ‘and to have days off.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“Hasn’t everyone to be born somewhere,’ Furlong said. ‘Sure wasn’t Jesus was born in Bethlehem.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“It would be the easiest thing in the world to lose everything,”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These

“It’s a hard feeling but as we walk along I begin to settle and let the difference between my life at home and the one I have here be.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“But it cut him, all the same, to see one of his own so upset by the sight of what other children craved and he could not help but wonder if she'd be brave enough or able for what the world had in store.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These