Exciting Times Quotes

“You keep describing yourself as this uniquely damaged person, when a lot of it is completely normal. I think you want to feel special - which is fair, who doesn’t - but you won’t allow yourself to feel special in a good way, so you tell yourself you’re especially bad”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“I thought that if i let anyone in, they’d find out what was broken about me. And then not only would they know, i’d know too.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“The truth is, you like Julian because he enables this perception you have of yourself as a detached person. Plenty of people are willing to offer you intimacy. That terrifies you. You prefer feeling like no one will ever love you.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“The trouble with my body was that I had to carry it around with me.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“You broke up with the love of your life because you saw how much power they had to hurt you.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“you still put more time and energy into showing you don’t love me than anyone has ever put into showing me they do.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“I wanted to explain that to Edith: that holding Julian's hand was like holding a museum pass, and holding hers was like holding a grenade.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“I have every respect for people who follow their passions, but I prefer stability.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“I’d been sad in Dublin, decided it was Dublin’s fault, and thought Hong Kong would help.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“I don’t think you’re interested in having a nice life. Which is arrogant, really, because you expect other people to help you maintain an existence that you yourself can’t work up any enthusiasm over. Don’t take this personally, by the way. I’m just observing.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“he did not want to be my boyfriend. That hurt my ego. I wanted other people to care more about me than I did about them.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“he asked if I liked girls. I wanted to say: my chief sexual preference is that I don’t like you.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“I wanted people to know we were together, but only the ones who wouldn't hurt us for it.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“Women in movies taught men how to feel things. They took men who felt nothing and made them feel something.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“When I met someone I liked, I wanted all of them, and fast.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“Women took care of men and let them pretend we didn’t.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“For Brits, class was like humility: you only had it as long as you denied it.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“My desire was for Julian’s feelings to be stronger than mine. No one would sympathize with that. I wanted a power imbalance, and I wanted it to benefit me.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“Sometimes i love you and sometimes i think it would be best if a plane flew into your office and you were on the plane or in the building”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“I enjoyed conversations where I wasn’t attempting to persuade anyone, where I just said precisely what I thought. I got tired of making myself acceptable.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“You're terrified of vulnerability. This is so both because others have been unkind to you in the past, and because you don't like yourself and are sure anyone who gets close will agree. That's what makes people afraid to offer you intimacy. They know you'll reject it. You broke up with the love of your life because you saw how much power they had to hurt you.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“Some mornings I didn’t leave the bed because then I’d have to brush my teeth, followed by a series of actions that amounted to living my life as the person I was. I was unable to drum up positivity about either dental hygiene or the rest of my day, so I told myself I was disgusting and lazy and I’d be late and they’d fire me, and then I got up. If you were really sick you couldn’t just harness your self-loathing like that, so I knew I was fine.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“I’d never slept with a woman before, though I’d spent most of my teens and college years obsessed with one or another. They’d all had boyfriends, or girlfriends, or else they were just patently not someone who would ever fancy me. When I told Edith this, she asked if I thought I’d gone for unavailable people because I knew I’d never have to face the reality that being with them would not solve all my problems. I told her she had no business saying something that perceptive.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“If the Irish didn’t aspirate and the English did then they were right, but if we did and the English didn’t then they were still right. The English taught us English to teach us they were right.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“At work I imagined nice things that might happen to me if I were a different person.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“It was like drinking something I'd been holding till it cooled, finding it still too hot, and gulping anyway because I'd been cold too long.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“I knew I’d do anything for money. Throughout college back in Ireland, I’d kept a savings account that I charmingly termed “abortion fund.” It had €1,500 in it by the end. I knew some women who saved with their friends, and they all helped whoever was unlucky. But I didn’t trust anyone. I got the money together by waitressing, then kept adding to it after I had enough for a procedure in England. I liked watching the balance go up. The richer I got, the harder it would be for anyone to force me to do anything.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“We wondered about the straights. 'They're like pandas.' Edith said. 'You pity them in the zoo, but fling the cage open and they'll stay there, chewing.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“I was scared with you as well, but I was ready to be scared.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“The only thing we had in common was DNA, which gave us limited mileage conversationally.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times