Home > Author > Edna O'Brien
1 " Love . . . is like nature, but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight, and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls. "
― Edna O'Brien , Lantern Slides: Short Stories
2 " Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world. "
― Edna O'Brien
3 " It is impossible to capture the essence of love in writing, only its symptoms remain, the erotic absorption, the huge disparity between the times together and the times apart, the sense of being excluded. "
― Edna O'Brien , Country Girl
4 " That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open. "
5 " My friends I tell you this, we are a jolly group but put us in uniform and all that change. In war I don’t know who my brother. In war I don’t know who my friend. War make everybody savage. Who can say what lies inside the heart of each one of us when everything is taken away. "
― Edna O'Brien , The Little Red Chairs
6 " Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment. "
― Edna O'Brien , In the Forest
7 " The words ran away with me. "
8 " I was lonelier than I should be, for a woman in love, or half in love. "
9 " When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious. "
10 " If the Holy Communion touched my teeth, I thought that was a mortal sin "
― Edna O'Brien , Saints and Sinners: Stories
11 " In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things. "
― Edna O'Brien , A Fanatic Heart
12 " Fiction should be in its way subversive. I don't think books should be neat or gentle or genteel or comforting. I think they should be raw. They should be written as perfectly as possible, but what they do is to stir up, to lance the reader. "
13 " If we are taken all together, we might muster some courage, but from the previous evidence it is likely that we will be taken separately. "
14 " Books everywhere. On the shelves and on the small space above the rows of books and all along the floor and under chairs, books that I have read, books that I have not read. "
15 " We all leave one another. We die, we change - it's mostly change - we outgrow our best friends; but even if I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it's inescapable... "
― Edna O'Brien , The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue
16 " She said the reason that love is so painful is that it always amounts to two people wanting more than two people can give. "
17 " ...people liking you or not liking you is an accident and is to do with them and not you. That goes for love too, only more so. "
― Edna O'Brien , Girls in Their Married Bliss
18 " The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed. "
19 " Life was a bitch. Love also was a bitch. "
20 " Sometimes one word can recall a whole span of life. "
― Edna O'Brien , Girl with Green Eyes
