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Gabe was the only person in Cyrus’s life, white or not, who spoke to him this way. There was something in it, a kind of old man punk fuck-it-ness Cyrus had long admired, even if it meant Gabe sometimes danced well past the third rail of political correctness.

I have no idea what you or Big Susan or Mike or any of those people mean when they talk about ‘higher power’. Most of those guys probably mean an old bearded dude in the clouds who gets mad when I suck a dick, who sends all Muslims to hell. What use is that higher power to me?

“Recovery is made of words, and words have all these rules. How can anything so limited touch something as big as whatever the fuck Higher Power is? How can it get rid of the big ball of rot inside me? It feels like this giant sponge sucking away anything in the world that’s supposed to feel good. What words can’t touch that?” Exasperated, Cyrus snorted at himself. “I don’t know. I’m sorry”

Drugs and booze sandpapered away everything else.

“There is no difference to the outside world between a good guy and a bad guy behaving like a good guy. In fact, I think God loves that second guy a little more.”

Her voice sounded the way wild rabbits look, just on the cusp of tearing off out of sight.

Her impeccable posture gave her a boarding-school air, New England royalty. Cyrus reflexively hates her. ..
He imagined her having joyless, clinical sec with the chiseled son of her father’s business partner, imagined them at a fancy candlelit restaurant dourly picking at a shared veal piccata, both ignoring the table bread.

Cyrus pretended to be “of those who perish.” He liked how the Quran put it that way, not “until you die” but “until you are of those who perish.” Like an arrival into a new community

Lying there reflecting on the possible miracle he’d just experienced, Cyrus asked God to do it again. Confirmation, like typing your password in twice to a web browser. Surely if the all-knowing creator of the universe had wanted to reveal themselves to Cyrus, there’s be no ambiguity.

He’d lain there on the bare mattress on the hardwood floor letting his cigarette ash on his bare stomach like some sulky prince, thinking, “Turn the lights on and off lord and I’ll buy a donkey ..”

To create your must feel and become comfortable, and sometimes you will feel isolation.

David remarked to Tess that he had had no idea a boat was being constructed in the school, no idea whatsoever he said a number of times and shook his head. But no one had any idea about anyone else in that school, about their lives, or trauma, their business, or about the weight they carried, Tess thought to herself.

Soil? Jamie said.
You put it in the currach for your safe return, Jamie. You come back to the land you left.
Very reassuring, Jamie said.

…to make excuses, all of the excuses why friends couldn’t come over, in the end it is easier not to make friends, to be guarded, to self-protect at all costs.

To keep going, keep going. She started crying hard now.

You haven’t let me down, Tadhg said, sharply. You’ve let the group down. But when someone puts the pressure on you, you’ll always bend and someday you will wonder who the fuck took your life, because you certainly won’t have it.
..
Path to hell paved with polite fucking nonsense, O’Tooke, Tadhg said as O’Toole walked out.

He worried he had offered Jamie too much.
He worried he had offered Tess too little.

He was unsure that a woman who was so resilient would ever allow herself to be loved. He thought about what colour the boy would concoct. About what happens when you allow people in. How you need to be vulnerable to allow another, just to be. But then he thought about how that can all go wrong.

Still, there was comfort in it, an awareness and the alive feeling that doing something new evokes.

Tadgh laughted. I’m not surprised, he said, you’ve quite the … ensemble … on … looks like something from Saturday Night Fever. [..]

I’d hate to blend in, she said. In Emory of all places

But it wouldn’t happen, he had rejected her, rejected the chaos that came with her, she knew this, deep down, he might say he was a relationship phobic, or whatever he was getting at, but Tess knew she was unsteady. And this was the most unattractive thing about her. It made loving herself impossible.

But soon panic rose in Tadhg. It was a panic that he had not had since dawn he left the island – that crippling familiar anxiety that came when something was added to his responsibilities.

Mr Foley told me to stop with talk about anxiety and not to let crazy ideas lie that into my head

I have done some research, and yoga seems like a very happy and bendy place (for most people, and one very happy woman with a dog on YouTube seemed very friendly and kind).

Yes, sure, but it’s an old island thing, fisherman respect the sea so they don’t learn to swim, it’s a superstition.
Maybe they want to die fast? Jamie said.
Tadhg said: Maybe, makes sense then, I suppose.

I think art is a way of figuring the world out, Jamie, and it’s all trial and error, figuring out what’s important. Film is art two.
But it is passive entertainment, Jamie said. Sometimes it’s a waste of time better spent doing something else. And really, look, Mr Foley, I’m not in school to figure out what is important. I already know that. I do need school for the machine, it’s a personal project

Everyone keeps secrets.
Does that make you feel better? The everyone-else-does-it-why-can’t-I-whataboutery?

Tess missed the swallows when they left her gables, flying south: watching them leave, she felt an immense loneliness. Then an undeniable envy at their freedom. The crows never seemed to leave.

The dark of winter was a challenge. Bareness arrived like a death, though it balanced with a lack of expectation of the season. People had permission to hibernate too, bed earlier, go slowly about life for a little while. Go off grid.

Americans were all about emotions. Quick release. The Irish were all about emotion suppression. Slow release.

You’re feeling abandoned, Tess, but what you need to ask yourself is: is this reality or am I paranoid? Is this a rational response to Paul’s actions?