Meghann "Meggie" Cleary

The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follow an immunatable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thron enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it.

She could only tell herself: Time heals all wounds—while not believing it.

Men believe that needing a woman is a weakness. I don’t mean to sleep with; I mean to need, really need.

I did it all to myself, I have no one else to blame. And I cannot regret one single moment of it.

Memory wasn’t a patch on reality; try as she would, the actual sensation couldn’t be conjured up, only a shadow of it, like a thin sad cloud.

Each of us has something within us which won’t be denied, even if it makes us scream aloud to die. We are what we are, that’s all. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with the thorn in its breast, singing its heart out and dying. Because it has to, it’s driven to. We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can’t affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it’s the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.

Did all men do that, love some inanimate thing more than they could love a woman? No, surely not all men. The difficult ones, perhaps, the complex ones with their seas of doubts and objections, rationalities. But there had to be simpler men, men who could surely love a woman before all else.

“There is nothing which has no right to be born, even an idea.”
“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“I think so.”
“Not everything born is good, Meggie.”
“No. But if it was born at all, it was meant to be.”

It didn’t matter what anyone else thought, it didn’t, it didn’t!

Why is it that every time I think I’ve got my life under control, something happens?

"Without faith, there is nothing.”
“A very ephemeral tenet.”

She slipped from the chair and crawled into his arms, pillowed her head on his dripping shirt and closed her eyes, so happy in spite of her pain and grief that she never wanted the moment to end. He had come, it was a vindication of her power over him, she hadn’t failed.

God’s thou wert, unto God return. Dust to dust. Living’s for those of us who failed. Greedy God, gathering in the good ones, leaving the world to the rest of us, to rot.

There was never a woman born who could beat God. He’s a Man.