My sins had fallen from me, because I had almost forgotten that there were such things and, when I got over it, my expulsion from religion, it was like being pushed outside a prison and told not to come back.
— Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
It’s great to be on your own for a bit, in the sun, and in the country. That’s one thing you never were in Walton. Nor any other prison, I suppose. For all their solitary confinement you were watched and your every moment—even at times when you’d give a dog a bit of privacy. What they call in Irish— “Uaigneas gan ciuneas” —loneliness with out peace.
— Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
He might have even forgotten what he’d told me; liars need good memories, but don’t often have them, as I know, and everyone else knows from personal experience.
— Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
I suppose you like a smoke as well as anyone else. Lady Nicotine, the Borstal boys’ god.
— Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
It was sad too, and for a moment we all stood together, united in sadness, in the dark cold night.
— Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
I sat down on the chair and leaned my head in my hands. I felt like crying for the first time in years, for the first time since I was a kid of four or five. I had often prayed after Mass at home that God would not let me lose the Faith. I thought of Sister Monica, the old nun that prepared me for my first Confession and Communion and Confirmation, and Father Campbell, the old priest in Gardiner Street that I went to Confession to, and Christmas numbers of the holy books we used to have at home. Never, never no more.
It was all Ballocks. — Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
It was all Ballocks. — Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
I turned to lay the books on the table. Better than a dozen of stout it was to see them there, the books.
— Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
It was a cold raw evening, and the light leaving the sky, wondering how it ever got into it.
— Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
A blunt and numbing pain it is, to wake up in a cell for the first time.
— Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan
