Paula Meehan quotes

Cora, Auntie

“Staring death down with a bottle of morphine in one hand, a bottle of Jameson; laughing at death.”

Cora, Auntie

“Sequins red as the berries, red as the lips of maids in old time ballads, red as blood on the snow, as blood on the bedsheet.”

Cora, Auntie

“The lights of those stars only reaching me now”

My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis

“The first frost whitened the slates of the estate”

My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis

“For the first time I saw the stoops of his shoulders”

My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis

“He was suddenly radiant, a perfect vision of St. Francis, made whole, made young again, in a Finglas garden”

Buying Winkles

‘The winkles would be wet and glisten blue like little night skies themselves”

Buying Winkles

“I’d wave up to women at sills or those lingering in doors and weave a glad path through men heading out for the night”

Buying Winkles

'“they’d leak the smell of men together with drink and I’d see light in golden mirrors”

The Pattern

'“knowing history has brought her to her knees”

The Pattern

“We might have made a new start as women without tags like mother, wife, sister, daughter, taken our chances from there”

The Pattern 

“Tongues of flame in her dark eyes,

shed say, ‘one of these days I must teach you to follow a pattern’