Colin Walsh > Quotes

“GRIEF IS LIKE falling in love; it is always narcissistic. Some catastrophe cuts through your life and immediately you reshape the world to make this disaster the secret heartbeat of all things, the buried truth of the universe.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“IN HER NOTEBOOKS, Mam used to write that people were like trees. Whenever I read this, I pretended to understand what she meant. But now, walking through Caille Woods, steeped in the heat and smell of twisted tree branches, I see: a growing tree, upon meeting an obstacle, does not stop, or reflect. It pushes itself blindly on, a surge of dumb life eager to continue itself, and it does this, again and again, till it becomes a warp of limbs, and this is how people are like trees; live long enough, and your life becomes a tangle of trajectories, a crooked monument to its own mutilations.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“The things that make life comfortable are always unacceptable, if you look at them square on. Someone, somewhere, is always suffering so you can be happy. Which is why most people spend their time looking the other direction.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“It takes strength to be open to life, to the possibility things will change for the better.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Up ahead on the Coast Road there's a bunch of teenagers, guys and girls. You don't understand kids' clothes anymore, what it all means. Back in the day things were all tribal -- clear lines. Your haircut and clothes said what music you liked, how smart you were, whether or not you were real, if you were reaching for the Other Place or stuck in the gutter. Internet's taken all of that, mangled the codes. People are mongrels of whatever the fuck now. Kurt Cobain shot himself for being a sell-out and these kids wouldn't even grasp the concept. You hate these kids. Wish you were these kids. Envy their obliviousness, like the world had just come into being, and existed only for you and your friends, and all you had was time.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Who drinks a decaf cappuccino? Be honest with yourself and get a cup of warm milk.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“the moments when you can say something are just that—moments—and once they’re gone, they’re gone, and you’ve added another brick to the wall.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“You were thinking about how suburbs are perfect cradles for dreaming: they practically beg you to imagine another life, one lived at a burning voltage. The dreaming hidden in this place — murmuring beneath the comfort of the uniform gardens in their perfect rows, the mowed lawns, each driveway that bit too small for the two large cars — you couldn't have become what you are if you hadn't always been from this.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Girls were pure different from fellas. They lit the room with candles, got extra pillows and cushions from upstairs. Big bags of M&M's and Maltesers. Popcorn with lashings of butter.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“You know what's the worst of it? When you get caught in a lie that awful? The relief. Just for a moment. Even if everything after that moment's a horror, there's...it's a release.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“You were thinking about how suburbs are perfect cradles for dreaming: they practically beg you to imagine another life, one lived at a burning voltage. The dreaming hidden in this place - murmuring beneath the comfort of the uniform gardens in their perfect rows, the mowed lawns, each driveway that bit too small for the two large cars you couldn't have become what you are if you hadn't always been from this.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“say you get caught inside one fixed idea of things, and you’re always clinging to it or whatever… that shit puts a block inside you. So now the river’s gotta move around this big fuck-off rock, and the more rocks you add to it, the more it starts flowing in weird ways, awkward diversions and stuff. And now you’re blocked up inside yourself, so you start to put blocks outside yourself too, in the world. Y’know?”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“I just want to switch myself off. Disconnect from everything.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“I am old enough to stop being afraid of many things. I will never stop being afraid of teenage girls.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Your brain's a static thing, stodgy, old, and you need to hold everything in distinct linear blocks. But life isn't like this - it doesn't come in neat episodes, it leaks and twists and knots and coils.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“There is no sign of Kala’s absence in Aoife’s darting, efficient energy.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Kala and you were something real, a force in the world that people had to move around, take notice of.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Half the time ye didn’t understand the films at all. But ye’d watch them and know that ye were reaching out to something bigger than Kinlough—touching the Other Place, a world that was realer and more romantic than life—and sometimes the movie would linger in the room afterwards like an echo of the future and ye’d sit by the window of his mam’s flat and stare out over Fox Street saying nothing.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Get to know anyone and that’s what happens; they shed one layer of mystery after another, the dismal burlesque towards their inevitable ordinariness.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Give her the smile you use for selfies. Your head is full of borrowed language. Phrases of condolence that have passed through a million mouths.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Mam called him harmless, which is one of the worst things you could say about a person.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“The things that make life comfortable are always unacceptable, if you look at them square on.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Sitting this close to the girls, I noticed little details. The downy fuzz on Aoife’s arms. A mole on Kala’s neck. A garish heart-shaped ring on Kala’s left hand. Traces of glitter in Aoife’s eyeshadow. The scatter of freckles across both their noses. The way their bodies fit themselves so well. How they closed their eyes to the sun and did not worry I might be watching. What it looked like to be seen.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Vapers are cunt wands,' Donna snaps.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Get to know anyone and that’s what happens; they shed one layer of mystery after another, the dismal burlesque towards their inevitable ordinariness. There’s a reason the surface of things is so appealing: it’s the same reason we don’t see what’s going on inside us all the time. Organs squelching. All that blood. The things that keep us alive happen in the dark, because they’re fucking ugly.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Wud love to be there man bt busy doing stock inventory here. my exciting life lol I hesitate and then delete the message without sending. No point in lying to people when you can say nothing.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Always talked about abstract stuff to avoid talking about her feelings. Or, she finds it easier to have feelings about abstract stuff than ordinary stuff.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“I didn’t realize then that the moments when you can say something are just that – moments – and once they’re gone, they’re gone, and you’ve added another brick to the wall.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“Quiet's not peaceful, man. Quiet is when the monsters come out.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala

“The cigarette was giving me the best ever headache. We lounged like this in a triangle for a while, in the moan and throb of the music, the thud of branches raining down. I imagined a coven of witches in the woods, moving around the flames of a fire. That probably felt as good as this.”
― Colin Walsh, Kala