Hession Quotes

“For so long I was afraid to stay close to anybody because I had so much anger and confusion inside me. I knew that I couldn't let anyone into my life until all that had passed. The problem I could never solve was how to relate to people in the meantime. Other people's love is frightening when you're suffering. It's overwhelming. When you're consumed with the effort of processing internal pain, it becomes impossible to do anything else. It's like holding your breath under water: you realise that you need to breathe but if you breathe at the wrong time, you drown. I only survived thanks to the people in my life -- people I repaid by letting them down.”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka

“But it was too late. He had already slipped into a deep depression and developed a dangerous indifference to himself. To describe it as sadness would be to ascribe a degree of feeling that was lacking in him during that period which lasted for — who knows? — perhaps weeks, months, or maybe almost twenty-five years.”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka

“There were times, she would admit, when for all her heroic independence, her sacred resilience, she would have liked to trust her weight to the love of another person like that. To fall backwards in absolute security. Bu she had only known doubting love. Love that needed to be weighed against what it cost. She was exhausted. Everything was so hard.”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka

“Aren't you afraid of failing? Letting everyone down?'
Esther thought about it.
'Maybe it's important that other people learn how to handle disappointment.”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka

“He had entered a selfish period of survival, [...]. They had rained love on him, willing him to open up and accept their support, but it all bounced back off the carapace that had formed around his wounded inner self. The tragedy during that time was that he neither let them in nor let them go. But what else is possible for a man unable to solve his own sadness?”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka

“Panenka had already internalised the profound blame being attached to him. He deserved it and the name that had already become branded on him. The criticism was justified; the punishment similarly so. They should be allowed to destroy him, and if they didn't do it, he would do it to himself.”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka

“Do you know what resonance is?'
'Resonance?'
'It's as though one person sounds a bell in their heart, and if the other person has the same bell inside them, it rings too.'
'I see,' he said to her reflection.
'So,' she continued, 'that's how you can recognise something in someone, even if you know nothing about them.”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka

“I could have asked for the full tour ― you could have shown me around all your own facts and circumstances, given me the tourist board version of yourself. A whole story that I would later have to revise or unlearn based on who you turned out to be. But if I start with what you're actually like, pick you up where I found you, then at least I'm starting with my information. I can sketch you my own way, and then colour you in over time. And you could do the same with me.”
― Ronan Hession, Panenka