Amber Araneae

“...Dead people have the best conversations of all. Lots of people don't really speak until they're dead, because only then can they say all the things to each other in the graveyard that they have been keeping a secret all their lives.”
― Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood

“They speak like that because they're afraid of the Irish language coming back and killing everybody in the country this time. He [my father] says Irish people drink too much and talk too much and don't want to speak Irish, because it stinks of poverty and dead people left lying in the fields. That's why they speak posh English and pretend that nothing ever happened.”
― Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood

“My father talks about people dying on coffin ships going to America and my mother talks about people dying on trains going to Poland. My father says our people died in the famine and my mother says those who died under the Nazis are our people, too. Everybody has things they can't forget.”
― Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood

“Great. Men affectionately attacked me with sticks to show their admiration.”
― Katherine Pine, Poisoned