Missing Ireland Quotes

After you left I stared at the driveway Feeling its emptiness Wondering if you’d return. After you left I thought about your questions Wishing I hadn’t been so blunt Wondering if I scared you away. After you left I remembered how you felt in my arms. How you fit so perfectly there. Like my guitar. Wondering if I should have kissed you when I had the chance. After you left I sat in my room Remembering all the things you said, and Wondering about all the things you didn’t. After you left I sat in silence. Missing you in a way I didn’t quite understand. Wondering if you’d ever come back.

Draped across an armchair lay his famous long black coat, empty now, and hollow with missing him.

Are you serious about leaving?" I touched my aching face. "Yes.But I don't know how." "I'd go with you," Colin said quietly. "Really?" "You know I would." "If you could do anything, what would you do? Would you go back to Ireland?" "Maybe," he said. "I've no family left there but I miss the green hills. I'd love to show them to you, show you Tara and the Cliffs of Moher.We could live in a thatched cottage and keep sheep." I grinned at him. "If you clean up after them." "What would be your perfect day then?" he asked, grinning back at me. "If you don't like my sheep?" "Your cottage sounds nice," I allowed. "I'd like to sleep in late and read as many books as I'd like and drink tea with lemon and eat pineapple slices for breakfast." "No velvet dresses and diamonds?" I rolled my eyes, then stopped when the bruises throbbed. "Ouch.And no, of course not.I don't care about that. Only books." I looked at him shyly. "And you." "That's all right then," he said softly.

I had a lovely childhood in Ireland, riding, hunting, and a great big, bare, draughty house with lots and lots of sun in it. If you’ve had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you, can they? It was afterwards—when I grew up—that things seemed always to go wrong.

It reminded me of our summer plans. Our road trip. Our pact not to think about the end so we wouldn’t miss out on the present.

I’d often wondered, absorbed in piles of research, if the magic of history would be lost if we could go back and live it. Did we varnish the past and make heroes of average men and imagine beauty and valor where there was only dirge and desperation? Or like the old man looking back on his youth, remembering only the things he’d seen, did the angle of our gaze sometimes cause us to miss the bigger picture? I didn’t think time offered clarity so much as time stripped away the emotion that colored memories. The Irish Civil War had happened eighty years before I’d traveled to Ireland. Not so far that the people had forgotten it, but enough time had passed that more—or maybe less—cynical eyes could pull the details apart and look at them for what they were.

Charles Lindbergh’s achievement in finding his way alone from Long Island to an airfield outside Paris deserves a moment’s consideration. Maintaining your bearings by means of dead reckoning means taking close note of compass headings, speed of travel, time elapsed since the last calculation, and any deviations from the prescribed route induced by drifting. Some measure of the difficulty is shown by the fact that the Byrd expedition the following month—despite having a dedicated navigator and radio operator, as well as pilot and copilot—missed their expected landfall by two hundred miles, were often only vaguely aware of where they were, and mistook a lighthouse on the Normandy coast for the lights of Paris. Lindbergh by contrast hit all his targets exactly—Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland, Cap de la Hague in France, Le Bourget in Paris—and did so while making the calculations on his lap while flying an unstable plane.

I’m going to kill her, and Miss Preston and the mayor. All of them. I’m going to gut them like fish and use them as shambler bait, then I’m going to burn both the school and the mayor’s house to the ground and dance upon the ashes.” “That’s good, Jane, that’s good. It’s good to have goals,” Katherine says, her voice trembling.

And I would miss her. Yeah, she'd hurt me, but all the good stuff over all our years as friends didn't just get erased. But at the same time, maybe a break would be good for us.

After it was done, Miss Anderson made some grand pronouncement, as despots are prone to do, and I knelt there in the dirt without a single regret, because that corn bread was delicious.

Let me see: There's Miss Garnnett in Ireland, in June of 1770; Miss Nightjar in Swansea on April 3, 1901; Miss Avocet and Miss Bunting together in Derbyshire on Saint Swithin's Day of 1867; Miss Treecreeper I don't remmeber where exactly-- oh, and dear Miss Finch.

I dont know why I put the china rabbit In my suitcase and Brought her to Ireland I sit her on this table Looking at me As I write this There are things That we hold on We hold on tightly Time can pass And years go by And these things And these objects And these people And these ideas That we held so tightly We have to let them go We hold them in Hold them down to be Who we think they are What we want them to be and what they mean to us and holding on to people Like old ideas and bad habits Or like china rabbits Now we don't need to be Doing that now Do we.

The diamond absolutes. I am neither internee nor informer; An inner emigre, grown long-haired And thoughtful; a wood-kerne Escaped from the massacre, Taking protective colouring From bole and bark, feeling Every wind that blows; Who, blowing up these sparks For their meagre heat, have missed The once-in-a-lifetime portent, The comet's pulsing tose.

I have to thank Messrs. Macmillan, and the editors of Belgravia, All the Year Round, and Monthly Packet, for leave to quote from Patrick Kennedy’s Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, and Miss Maclintock’s articles respectively; Lady Wilde, for leave to give what I would from her Ancient Legends of Ireland (Ward & Downey); and Mr. Douglas Hyde, for his three unpublished stories

It had been obvious to me from a young age that my parents didn’t like one another. Couples in films and on television performed household tasks together and talked fondly about their shared memories. I couldn’t remember seeing my mother and father in the same room unless they were eating. My father had “moods.” Sometimes during his moods my mother would take me to stay with her sister Bernie in Clontarf, and they would sit in the kitchen talking and shaking their heads while I watched my cousin Alan play Ocarina of Time. I was aware that alcohol played a role in these incidents, but its precise workings remained mysterious to me. I enjoyed our visits to Bernie’s house. While we were there I was allowed to eat as many digestive biscuits as I wanted, and when we returned, my father was either gone out or else feeling very contrite. I liked it when he was gone out. During his periods of contrition he tried to make conversation with me about school and I had to choose between humoring and ignoring him. Humoring him made me feel dishonest and weak, a soft target. Ignoring him made my heart beat very hard and afterward I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. Also it made my mother cry. It was hard to be specific about what my father’s moods consisted of. Sometimes he would go out for a couple of days and when he came back in we’d find him taking money out of my Bank of Ireland savings jar, or our television would be gone. Other times he would bump into a piece of furniture and then lose his temper. He hurled one of my school shoes right at my face once after he tripped on it. It missed and went in the fireplace and I watched it smoldering like it was my own face smoldering. I learned not to display fear, it only provoked him. I was cold like a fish. Afterward my mother said: why didn’t you lift it out of the fire? Can’t you at least make an effort? I shrugged. I would have let my real face burn in the fire too. When he came home from work in the evening I used to freeze entirely still, and after a few seconds I would know with complete certainty if he was in one of the moods or not. Something about the way he closed the door or handled his keys would let me know, as clearly as if he yelled the house down. I’d say to my mother: he’s in a mood now. And she’d say: stop that. But she knew as well as I did. One day, when I was twelve, he turned up unexpectedly after school to pick me up. Instead of going home, we drove away from town, toward Blackrock. The DART went past on our left and I could see the Poolbeg towers out the car window. Your mother wants to break up our family, my father said. Instantly I replied: please let me out of the car. This remark later became evidence in my father’s theory that my mother had poisoned me against him.

Because,' he said, 'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you, especially when you are near me, as now; it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situation in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and the nI've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.' 'That I never would, sir; you know -,' impossible to proceed. [...] The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway and asserting a right to predominate - to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes, and to speak. 'I grieve to leave Thornfield; I love Thornfield; I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life, momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright, and energetic, and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence; with what I delight in, with an origin, a vigorous, and expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you forever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.' 'Where do you see the necessity?' he asked, suddenly. 'Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.' 'In what shape?' 'In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman, your bride.' 'My bride! What bride? I have no bride!' 'But you will have.' 'Yes; I will! I will!' He set his teeth. 'Then I must go; you have said it yourself.' 'No; you must stay! I swear it, and the oath shall be kept.' 'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. 'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automation? a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; it is my spirit that addresses your spirits; just as if both had passed through the grace, and we stood at God's feel, equal - as we are!' 'As we are!' repeated Mr. Rochester - 'so,' he added, including me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips; 'so, Jane!' 'Yes, so, sir,' I rejoined; 'and yet not so; for you are a married man, or as good as a married man, and we'd to one inferior to you - to one with whom you have no sympathy - whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union; therefore I am better than you - let me go!' 'Where, Jane? to Ireland?' 'Yes - to Ireland. I have spoke my mind, and can go anywhere now.' 'Jane, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird that is tending its own plumage in its desperation.' 'I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.' Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him. 'And your will shall decide your destiny,' he said; 'I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.' 'You play a farce, which I merely taught at.' 'I ask you to pass through life at my side - to be my second self, and best earthly companion.' [...] 'Do you doubt me, Jane?' 'Entirely.' 'You have no faith in me?' 'Not a whit.

The Riders Placencia Beach, Belize, 1996 Americans aren’t overly familiar with Tim Winton, although in my mind he is one of the best writers anywhere. This novel is set in Ireland and Greece as a man and his daughter search for their missing wife and mother. Gripping. 2. Family Happiness Miacomet Beach, Nantucket, 2001 The finest of Laurie Colwin’s novels, this is, perhaps, my favorite book in all the world. It tells the story of Polly Demarest, a Manhattan woman who is torn between her very uptown lawyer husband and her very downtown artist lover. 3. Mary and O’Neil Cottesloe Beach, Western Australia, 2009 These connected stories by Justin Cronin will leave you weeping and astonished. 4. Appointment in Samarra Nha Trang Beach, Vietnam, 2010 This classic novel was recommended to me by my local independent bookseller, Dick Burns, once he had found out how much I loved Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. John O’Hara’s novel has all the requisite elements of a page-turner—drinking, swearing, and country club adultery, although set in 1930s Pennsylvania. This may sound odd, but trust me, it’s un-put-downable! 5. Wife 22 Oppenheimer Beach, St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, 2012 If you like piña coladas… you will love Melanie Gideon’s tale of marriage lost and rediscovered. 6. The Interestings Steps Beach, Nantucket, 2013 And this summer, on Steps Beach in Nantucket, I will be reading The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer. Wolitzer is one of my favorite writers. She explores the battles between the sexes better than anyone around.

Ready yourselves!' Mullone heard himself say, which was strange, he thought, for he knew his men were prepared. A great cry came from beyond the walls that were punctuated by musket blasts and Mullone readied himself for the guns to leap into action. Mullone felt a tremor. The ground shook and then the first rebels poured through the gates like an oncoming tide. Mullone saw the leading man; both hands gripping a green banner, face contorted with zeal. The flag had a white cross in the centre of the green field and the initials JF below it. John Fitzstephen. Then, there were more men behind him, tens, then scores. And then time seemed to slow. The guns erupted barely twenty feet from them. Later on, Mullone would remember the great streaks of flame leap from the muzzles to lick the air and all of the charging rebels were shredded and torn apart in one terrible instant. Balls ricocheted on stone and great chunks were gouged out by the bullets. Blood sprayed on the walls as far back as the arched gateway, limbs were shorn off, and Mullone watched in horror as a bloodied head tumbled down the sloped street towards the barricade. 'Jesus sweet suffering Christ!' Cahill gawped at the carnage as the echo of the big guns resonated like a giant's beating heart. Trooper O'Shea bent to one side and vomited at the sight of the twitching, bleeding and unrecognisable lumps that had once been men. A man staggered with both arms missing. Another crawled back to the gate with a shattered leg spurting blood. The stench of burnt flesh and the iron tang of blood hung ripe and nauseating in the oppressive air. One of the low wooden cabins by the wall was on fire. A blast of musketry outside the walls rattled against the stonework and a redcoat toppled backwards onto the cabin's roof as the flames fanned over the wood. 'Here they come again! Ready your firelocks! Do not waste a shot!' Johnson shouted in a steady voice as the gateway became thick with more rebels. He took a deep breath. 'God forgive us,' Corporal Brennan said. 'Liberty or death!' A rebel, armed with a blood-stained pitchfork, shouted over-and-over.

8000 B.C.: Mistaking Irish Channel for heavy fog, Scottish shepherds wander into Ireland. They miss their sheep and go home, but memory lingers for hours.

It only took two hundred and fourty days seven hours twenty-six minutes and eighteen seconds But I can finally say it: I'm over you. I no longer thing about the way your hips move when you walk the way your lips move when you read the way you always took your glove off before you held my hand so you could feel me I've completly forgotten about texts in the middle of the night, saying you love me, miss me inside jokes no one else thinks are funny songs that made you want to pull your car over and kiss me immediately I can't remember how your voice sounds how your mouth tastes how your bedroom looks when the sun first comes up. I can't recall exactly what you said that day what I was wearing how long it took me to start crying. It only took two hundred and fourty days seven hours twenty-six minutes and eighteen seconds to wipe you from my memory. But if you said you wanted me again today or tomorrow or two hundred and fourty days seven hours twenty-six minutes and eighteen seconds from now, I'm sure it would all come back to me.

friends, detectives were quickly

That’s the way of the colonizers. They divvied their arts up so much that they were left with nothing but ashes, and when even that started to fail, they combined alchemy and science into Mechomancy, hardly requiring any art at all. But the mystical arts have been around far longer than their machines and constructs. The Possibilities will always balance out, somehow, some way. And when the reaction is powerful enough—” “You get the Great Rust,” the Skylark says. Miss Fox nods. “Or the Spanish flu. Or the Johnstown floods. Really, this land has been telling folks for a while to get their business in order, and we just keep on legislating nature, as if the Possibilities care what a bunch of men in some building in Washington have to say about them.

the modern world’s cultural wallpaper. Of course, a good deal of what we think we know is just plain wrong, starting with those horned helmets, completely impractical in any kind of close combat. But more important than what’s wrong is what’s missing. There’s a question that has to be asked. How did the Vikings get away with it for so long? Or, putting it another way, what gave them their edge? An edge they maintained for almost three centuries, during which they became the scourge of Europe, from Ireland to Ukraine, from Hamburg to Gibraltar, and beyond in both directions. [from Laughing Shall I Die by Tom Shippey]

contestants pictured online. But it was tricky. Each of the girls competing to be Miss Universe Ireland, and from there to be Miss Universe for the world/universe overall, had an adversity they had overcome. One had been a refugee from a war in Africa. Another had needed surgery when she was a small girl. A very thin contestant had once been very fat. The

Sometimes if you are looking at the forest you miss what is happening in the trees.

Let me see: There’s Miss Gannett in Ireland, in June of 1770; Miss Nightjar in Swansea on April 3, 1901; Miss Avocet and Miss Bunting together in Derbyshire on Saint Swithin’s Day of 1867; Miss Treecreeper I don’t remember where exactly—oh, and dear Miss Finch. Somewhere I have a lovely photograph of her.

The date was in your paperwork.” Miss Larsen smiles, handing me a slice of currant bread. “My landlady made this.” I look at her, not sure I understand. “For me?” “I mentioned that we had a new girl, and that your birthday was coming up. She likes to bake.” The bread, dense and moist, tastes like Ireland. One bite and I am back in Gram’s cottage, in front of her warm Stanley range.

I’ve already asked you to marry me, Rose. This may simply hasten our wedding.” But then Iain sat down and drew up a chair for her to sit across from him. “Have you an answer for me?” She wanted to say yes, but was afraid of all the obstacles between them. “You still don’t think I’m strong enough to endure Ireland, do you?” “No. You would not be happy at Ashton as it stands now. But I could marry you and let you stay here, in England. At least until it’s safer for you to join me, or until I’ve restored order to our lands.” His offer was meant to protect her, she was certain. And yet, she didn’t feel it was right to live apart. “How long do you imagine that would be?” He shook his head, lifting his shoulders in a shrug. “I cannot say, Rose. All I know is that the thought of watching you wed another man is something I can’t endure. And if I tried to wed an heiress for her money, I would regret every moment. It’s not fair to her. Or to you.” Iain removed her glove, edging her palm with his thumb. The caress echoed through her body, and she warmed to his touch. His green eyes locked on hers, and he knelt down before her. “Marry me, Rose.” “I do care about you Iain,” she murmured. “But there are many decisions we need to discuss. Like how you will get food for your tenants when you have no money. I don’t even know how much money our family has or if I have a dowry at all.” Every time she’d tried to speak with her mother, Lady Penford could give her no answers. Lily had written to their land steward but had no more information than before. “Cain Sinclair has offered to donate some food and supplies. We also spoke of other ways to restore Ashton.” Though his response should have reassured her, she hadn’t missed the uncertainty in his tone. And though she did want to be with Iain, she worried about their future. He rose from his knees and sat down across from her. “If you are asking all these questions, I can only assume you are considering it.” She was, but she couldn’t quite dispel her fears. “I might.” With a daring smile, she added, “Perhaps you should convince me.” He pulled his chair closer so that their knees touched. Then he cupped her face and kissed her softly. Yearning awakened within her, and she responded, kissing him back with all her unspoken feelings. She did love this man and wanted to be with him. But never did she want him to look upon her with regret. Her

End of May 2012               Hi Andy, I guess we were too arrogant to admit we missed each other after our separation. There were moments when I felt lost and did not know which direction to turn, because my Valet wasn’t there to guide me. I descended into an abyss, looking for love in all the wrong places. I was too inexperienced to understand the spiritual love we shared. I mistook sex for love. A major mistake! I was lonely and I missed your presence. To fill the void, I visited the London underground sex club dungeons and back rooms. These places offered me nothing, except a temporary sexual fix that became a habit and an addiction. Nine months passed before I finally picked up the broken pieces of my life. Lucky to be accepted into the Belfast College of Art and Design, I took this opportunity to start fresh. I left London in the autumn of 1971 for Ireland. My departure proved to be my saving grace. There was nothing to do in the evenings in war-torn Belfast. I plunged myself into my art studies, which I enjoyed tremendously. You’ll never guess what transpired in Belfast that year.

It’s no coincidence that the style of writing known as stream of consciousness was pioneered by Irish authors. Critics have missed the point, however, in regarding it as a radical, experimental reaction against literary convention. For many Irish people, the avant-garde monologue is the most commonplace form of everyday speech; and a very liberating thing it is too. Like the best kind of journey, it’s always liable to veer off in entirely unexpected directions and lead you to destinations you might never otherwise have considered.

I slid back into my mind and slid once more to my worlds. The wind and the green of Ireland flooded back to me and the clouds moved in from the sea. I threw my head back to the skies and smiled. I could hear the stream nearby and wasted no time seeking it out. She called to me and I listened. I found the stream and I followed through the wood. How I missed my forest, my cottage, my realm. How I wished for nothing else, but to stay there until I died.