niall mcdowell

“They had stared at her with great uncomprehending eyes. Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared up at her. The end of the world lay in their eyes, and the beginning, and all the waste in between.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

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

“Moral: The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn’t always safe, but it’s often necessary.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Was that what was so painful: that nobody had ever come so close to me- nobody had ever seen me, and come right up to me, and kept going, and looked into my eyes so seriously, with so little fear?”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or