Helen

“Even when she wants something, her first instinct is to say that she doesn't.”
― Oisín McKenna, Evenings and Weekends

“Their wordlessness is a symptom of their intimacy, so attuned to each other that they are beyond verbal language altogether. Barely saying a word, these two are understood. They will go home; they will watch telly; they will go to bed. She will turn over onto her side and he will hold her from behind, the same position they have slept in for nearly forty years.

They will be like that when they doze off and they will be like that when they wake up and he will bring her a cup of tea and say, ‘I love you,’ and she will say, ‘I love you too.’

There is no need to waste time saying ‘I will miss you when you’re gone’ and ‘I don’t want to go to a place where I can’t hold you any more’ because all of this is understood.”
― Oisín McKenna, Evenings and Weekends

“He thinks of himself as a good communicator. He thinks of himself as having transcended the stereotype of men as being unable to describe their feelings. But around his family he becomes the most repressed of all, like the sad old patriarchs who were brought up to believe that the strength of society relies on their continued silence.”
― Oisín McKenna, Evenings and Weekends

“He felt a flash of familiar shame—his whole life had been a steady procession of him passionately loving what other people merely liked, and struggling, mostly failing, to translate to anyone else how and why everything mattered so much.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!