Micheál Breen

“She made him feel safe and calm. He thought about everything she must have sacrificed to make sure he grew up into a happy person. Except he wasn’t happy, which made him feel like he’d failed her. After the years of her working and studying, of worrying about how he was being treated at school or wondering why he was being distant and evasive with her, he’d ended up miserable anyway. He felt overwhelmed with love for her, undeserving of her.”
― Curtis Garner, Isaac

“Reason rather than faith has been my master … I have felt for some time that this doctrine of mine ill fitted me to be leader of the republican party … nature never fashioned me to be a partisan leader … For the sake of the cause I allowed myself to be put into a position which it is impossible for one of my outlook and personal bias to fill with effect for the party … every instinct of mine would indicate that I was meant to be a dyed-in-the-wool Tory, or even a Bishop, rather than the leader of a revolution.”
― Diarmaid Ferriter, Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War

“Low-quality photography showed Michelangelo chests harnessed in leather, feet in sloppy football socks, their soles black with dirt, or headless bodies in tight underwear, obscured by streaky mirrors in gyms and supermarket toilets. One boy posed before a row of Portaloos at a festival, wearing a flamingo-print shirt and round sunglasses, the pink lenses all but concealing pill-fed pupils. Others lay in their bathtubs; climbed up metal steps at lidos; stood before lakes, castles or famous paintings; sat cross-legged on wind-battered sand dunes; or pinched the Leaning Tower of Pisa between thumb and forefinger.”
― Curtis Garner, Isaac

“Take it from me, never wait for happiness to announce itself to you, because chances are it’s already happening.”
― Curtis Garner, Isaac