Цитаты из книги Dit soort kleinigheden

... As they carried on along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there…

The worst was yet to come, he knew. Already he could feel a world of trouble waiting for him behind the next door, but the worst that could have happened was also already behind him; the thing not done, which could have been – which he would have had to live with for the rest of his life.

What would life be like, he wondered, if they were given time to think and reflect over feelings? Might their lives be different or much the same – or would they just lose the run of themselves?

'Where does thinking get us?' she said. 'All thinking does is bring you down.' She was touching the little pearly buttons on her nightdress, agitated. 'If you want to get on with life, there's things you have to ignore, so you can keep on.'

A Note on the Text This is a work of fiction based in no part on any individual or individuals. Ireland’s last Magdalen laundry was not closed down until 1996. It is not known how many girls and women were concealed, incarcerated and forced to labour in these institutions. Ten thousand is the modest figure; thirty thousand…

‘Is it five you have, or six?’ ‘It’s five we have, Mother.’ She got up then and took the lid off the teapot, and stirred the leaves. ‘But it must be disappointing, all the same.’ Her back was to him. ‘Disappointing?’ Furlong said. ‘In what way?’ ‘To have no boy to carry on the name.’ She meant business but Furlong, who’d…

‘But what if it was one of ours?’ Furlong said. ‘This is the very thing I’m saying,’ she said, rising again. ‘Tis not one of ours.’ ‘Isn’t it a good job Mrs Wilson didn’t share your ideas?’ Furlong looked at her. ‘Where would my mother have gone? Where would I be now?’ ‘Weren’t Mrs Wilson’s cares far from any of ours?’…

They could be like young witches sometimes, «...». It was easy to understand why women feared men with their physical strength and lust and social powers, but women, with their canny intuitions, were so much deeper: they could predict what was to come long before it came, dream it overnight, and read your mind.

What was it all for? Furlong wondered. The work and the constant worry. Getting up in the dark and going to the yard, making the deliveries, one after another, the whole day long, then coming home in the dark and trying to wash the black off himself and sitting into a dinner at the table and falling asleep before waking…