" The curtain of worldly desire must be ripped in half and I must look into my own soul and overcome the pit of hell. ‘I am in hell,’ I blurted to her. She almost struck me with her raised withered hand. After that it was banishment. I was sent to a sister house in Ballinasloe, silence and meditation, excused from all manual work, alone with myself, no patients to occupy the welter of my thoughts. "
― Edna O'Brien , The Light of Evening