Shaun

“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

“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

“Suppressing a smile isn’t easy. The happiness always creeps out somehow. But sadness can be stashed under the skin like a dark secret.”
― A.M. Shine, The Watchers

“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men