Saoirse Ronan Monologues

Hi Mom and Dad, it's me, Christine. It's the name you gave me. It's a good one. Dad, this is more for Mom. Hey, Mom, did you feel emotional the first time that you drove in Sacramento? I did and I wanted to tell you, but we weren't really talking when it happened. All those bends I've known my whole life, and stores, and the whole thing. But I wanted to tell you I love you. Thank you, I'm… thank you.

The only thing exciting about 2002 is that it's a palindrome.

Just because something looks ugly doesn't mean that it's morally wrong.

No. I'm just saying that, if you took up close pictures of my vagina while I was on my period, it would be disturbing but it doesn't make it wrong.

Listen, if your mother had had the abortion, we wouldn't have to sit through this stupid assembly!

People go by the names their parents give them, but they don't believe in God.

Different things can be sad... it's not all war!

I found when it happened that I really like dry humping more.

I hate California, I want to go to the east coast. I want to go where culture is like, New York, or Connecticut or New Hampshire.

If Danny and I get married and then his grandma died, I'd inherit the dream house.

Oh yeah, we'd have to kill them. And we'd have to kill his older brothers too.

Yeah, but also those East Coast liberal arts schools. Like Yale, but not Yale because I probably couldn't get in.

The only exciting thing about 2002 is that it's a palindrome.

I just don't get why I'm not good at math. My dad is really good at math. Even Miguel has a math degree.

Just because something looks ugly doesn't mean that its morally wrong.

You have to think like an American. You'll feel so homesick that you'll want to die, and there's nothing you can do about it apart from endure it. But you will, and it won't kill you. And one day the sun will come out - you might not even notice straight away, it'll be that faint. And then you'll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past. Someone who's only yours. And you'll realize… that this is where your life is.

I'd forgotten what this town is like. What were you planning to do, Miss Kelly? Keep me away from Jim? Stop me from going back to America? Perhaps you didn't even know. Perhaps it was enough for you to know that you could ruin me. My name is Eilis Fiorello.

Dear Rose, thank you for your letter. I was happy to hear about your golf tournament. You must have been really pleased. I still miss you and Mother and think about you every day, but I think I can say that for the first time since I've been in America, I'm really happy. This has a lot to do with Tony. At the weekend, he took me to see the Brooklyn Dodgers, the baseball team he loves. They lost, so he was annoyed. But I've also started to look for office work, too. I had an interview this week at a textile firm here in Brooklyn. Who'd have thought there would be two bookkeepers in the family? I'll soon be able to afford to come home and see you and Mammy.

Dear, Rose. I suppose the most important news is that I have a boyfriend. He isn't as important as Bartocci's and my night classes, I know that, but I want to tell you everything that's going on. Please don't mention it to Mammy, though. You know what she's like. He's decent and kind, and he has a job and he works hard. We go to the cinema on Wednesdays and he takes me to Father Flood's dance on Saturdays. I think of you and Mother every single day, but Tony has helped me to feel that I have a life here I didn't have before I met him. My body was here, but my life was back in Ireland with you. Now it's halfway across the sea. So that's something, isn't it?

When my mother came to my room, I realized that all this time, I'd been waiting for her. I had been waiting so long, I was afraid she wouldn't come.

Nobody notices when we leave. I mean, the moment when we really choose to go. At best you might feel a whisper, or the wave of a whisper, undulating down. My name is Salmon, like the fish. First name: Susie. I was 14 years old, when I was murdered, on December 6, 1973. I was here for a moment. And then I was gone. I wish you all a long and happy life.

There was one thing my murderer didn't understand; he didn't understand how much a father could love his child.

These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence. The connections, sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent., that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it.

My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. I took his photo once as he talked to my parents about his border flowers. I was aiming for the bushes when he got in the way. He stepped out of nowhere and ruined the shot. He ruined a lot of things.

When I was alive, I never hated anyone. But now hate was all that I had.

Grandma Lynn predicted I would live a long life because I had saved my brother. As usual, Grandma Lynn was wrong.

I remember being really small; too small to see over the edge of a table. There was a snow globe, and I remember the penguin who lived inside the globe. He was all alone in there, and I worried for him.

I was slipping away, that's what it felt like, life was leaving me, but I wasn't afraid; then I remembered: "There was something I was meant to do; somewhere I was meant to be."

I was in the blue horizon between heaven and earth. The days were unchanging and every night I dream the same dream. The smell of damp earth. The scream no one heard. The sound of my heart beating like a hammer against cloth and I would hear them calling, the voices of the dead. I wanted to follow them to find a way out but I would always come back to the same door. And I was afraid. I knew if I went in there I would never come out.

My murderer could live in one moment for a long time. He could feed off the memory, over and over again. He was animal. Faceless. Infinite. But then he would feel it, the emptiness returning, and the need would rise in him again.

Holly said there was a wide, wide heaven beyond everything we knew; where there was no cornfield, no memory, no grave… but I wasn't looking beyond yet, I was still looking back.

Always, I would watch Ray; I was in the air around him, I was in the cold winter mornings he spent with Ruth Connors; and sometimes Ray would think of me, but he began to wonder maybe it was time to put that memory away, maybe it was time to let me go.

When people asked my mother, she always said she had two children.

You realize by the time I see my photos, I'm gonna be middle-aged.

For now, I'd have to make do with Grace Tarking.