Erin

“He did not want her to know.
He did not want her to see.
But:
Look at me, he found himself thinking furiously at her. Look at me.
She lifted her eyes, and did.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Crime

“I've thought since that when folk grumble about this and that and be not happy, it is not the fault of creation, that is like a vast mere full of good, but it is the fault of their bucket's smallness.”
― Mary Webb, Precious Bane

“He was ever a strong man, which is almost the same, times, as to say a man with little time for kindness. For if you stop to be kind, you must swerve often from your pat. So when folk tell me of this great man and that great man, I think to myself, Who was stinted of joy for his glory? How many old folk and children did his coach wheels go over? What bridal lacked his song, and what mourner his tars, that he found time to climb so high?”
― Mary Webb, Precious Bane

“An emotion clamped down on her heart. It squeezed her into a terrible silence. But he said nothing after that, only her name, as if her name were not a name but a question. Or perhaps that it wasn’t how he had said it, and she was wrong, and she’d heard a question simply because the sound of him speaking her name made her wish that she were his answer.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner's Crime