"Eilis slipped away, glad no one had noticed that she had not spoken once at the meal.  She wondered if she could go out now, do anything rather than face her tomb of a bedroom and all the thoughts that would come when she lay awake and all the thoughts that would come when she slept.  She stood in the hall, and then turned upstairs, realizing that she was afraid too of the outside, and even if she were not she would have no idea where to go at this time of the evening.  She hated this house, she thought, its smells, its noises, its colors.  She was already crying as she went up the stairs.  She knew that as long as the others were discussing their wardrobes in the kitchen below, she would be able to cry as loudly as she pleased without their hearing her."
-Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

"She was nobody here.  It was not just that she had no friends and family; it was rather that she was a ghost in this room, in the streets on the way to work, on the shop floor.  Nothing meant anything.  The rooms in the house on Friary Street belonged to her, she thought; when she moved in them she was really there.  In the town, if she walked to the shop or to the Vocational School, the air, the light, the ground, it was all solid and part of her, even if she met no one familiar.  Nothing here was part of her.  It was false, empty, she thought.  She closed her eyes and tried to think, as she had done so many times in her life, of something she was looking forward to, but there was nothing.  Not the slightest thing.  Not even Sunday.  Nothing maybe except sleep, and she was not even certain she was looking forward to sleep.  In any case, she could not sleep yet, since it was not yet nine o'clock.  There was nothing she could do.  It was as though she had been locked away."
-Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

"I know that I am always alone, even when surrounded by people, so I let the emptiness in."
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour