balagesh

“She wished that she could pray now for something – for Declan to be better, or for Declan not to be worse. But she realised as she walked through the car park and then up through the fields that she could not pray. She could only wish; and she fervently wished that what was coming could be delayed or stopped as she made her way along the road into the village.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Blackwater Lightship

“Van egy mesterségem. Azt szeretném csinálni. Szeretnék egyszer két évig az íróasztalnál ülni, és nem tudni, hogy ki a magyar miniszterelnök.”
― Pál Réz, Bokáig pezsgőben

“Carmel couldn’t figure it out. How had she ended up with this job, for which she had never applied? Was it the sex – which got good for about two minutes and then wasn’t? Or staying over? Maybe that was where the spell got cast. Maybe, if you were a woman, the act of sleeping was enough. It could happen on a bus, you could do it on a plane. You could nod off, wake up beside some strange man who was now yours to mind for life. Carmel wanted to laugh, but actually there was an inner shrieking in her head going, I have a daughter. I have a daughter. I have a daughter, you bitch, she is only nine.”
― Anne Enright, The Wren, the Wren

“And then the nights came on and the frosts took hold again, and blades of cold slid under doors and cut the knees off those who still knelt to say the rosary.”
― Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These