“She has gone back to Brooklyn,' her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmire Bridge on its way towards Wexford, Eilis imagined the years already when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.”

“And she would weep. When he saw tears rolling down her face, he would forgive her.She was less certain whether she would forgive herself.”

“Jenny couldn't believe herself a multiple. She was a mother, a nurse, not that screwball who appeared on the screen like some dysfunctional figment of her imagination trying to find a life. Still, she was coming to a realization that accepting who she was would be the jailer's key to liberate her from this cuckoo's nest.”

“It would make a lot more sense if she had imagined this whole thing, her whole life. Now would just be now, attached to some other, more straightforward past.”

“She would see it as betrayal. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“And the more she could imagine this island, the less she liked the real world. The more she could imagine the people, the less she liked any real people.”