Edna O'Brien Quotes

Quotes about:

• History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders.

  Edna O'Brien

  Bystanders, Fiction, Said

  43 Copy quote

• 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

  Knowing, Different, Persons

  Edna O'Brien (2002). “The Lonely Girl”, Plume

  41 Copy quote

• When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.

  Edna O'Brien

  Character, Tree, Ireland And The Irish

  32 Copy quote

• Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds withother nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous.

  Edna O'Brien

  Country, Philosophy, Odds

  38 Copy quote

• It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence.

  Edna O'Brien

  Fate, Novelists, Individual

  New York Times Book Review, February 14, 1993.

  62 Copy quote

• Sometimes one word can recall a whole span of life.

  Edna O'Brien

  Sometimes, Whole, Recalls

  Edna O'Brien (1978). “Seven novels and other short stories”, HarperCollins

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  Beautiful, Flower, Love Is

  32 Copy quote

• In a way Winter is the real Spring - the time when the inner things happen, the resurgence of nature.

  Edna O'Brien

  Spring, Real, Winter

  21 Copy quote

• The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.

  Edna O'Brien

  Women, Memorable, Mean

  28 Copy quote

• ... we have so many voices in us, how do we know which ones to obey?

  Edna O'Brien

  Voice, Knows

  Edna O'Brien (1978). “I hardly knew you”, Doubleday Books

  4 Copy quote

• When something has been perfect, there is a tendency to try hard to repeat it.

  Edna O'Brien

  Perfection, Trying, Tendencies

  Edna O'Brien (1978). “Seven novels and other short stories”, HarperCollins

  7 Copy quote

• Ordinary life bypassed me, but I also bypassed it. It couldn't have been any other way.Conventional life and conventional people are not for me.

  Edna O'Brien

  People, Ordinary, Way

  Novelists, Poets and Playwrights (2002).

  25 Copy quote

• Writers, however mature and wise and eminent, are children at heart.

  Edna O'Brien

  Wise, Children, Heart

  16 Copy quote

• Money talks, but tell me why all it says is just Goodbye.

  Edna O'Brien

  Goodbye, Money Talks

  Edna O'Brien (2012). “Country Girl”, p.27, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• what makes us so afraid is the thing we half see, or half hear, as in a wood at dusk, when a tree stump becomes an animal and a sound becomes a siren. And most of that fear is the fear of not knowing, of not actually seeing correctly.

  Edna O'Brien

  Fear, Animal, Knowing

  12 Copy quote

• never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature's assiduousness and human cruelty.

  Edna O'Brien

  Flower, Saffron, Bees

  Edna O'Brien (2007). “The Light of Evening”, p.81, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  23 Copy quote

• I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.

  Edna O'Brien

  Long, Catholic, Guilt

  19 Copy quote

• She said the reason that love is so painful is that it always amounts to two people wanting more than two people can give.

  Edna O'Brien

  Love Is, Two, People

  Edna O'Brien (2011). “Saints and Sinners”, p.137, Faber & Faber

  9 Copy quote

• In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.

  Edna O'Brien

  Moments, Inadequate

  Edna O'Brien (2013). “The Love Object: Selected Stories of Edna O'Brien”, p.115, Faber & Faber

  6 Copy quote

• Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are walking by the seashore, footprint after footprint of trodden sand, and somehow the kiss or the spoken covenant gets lost in the vastness and indifference of nature. In a city there are places to remind us of what has been.

  Edna O'Brien

  Kissing, Cities, Vastness

  Edna O'Brien (2011). “Saints and Sinners”, p.128, Faber & Faber

  8 Copy quote

• Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul.

  Edna O'Brien

  Soul, Mind, Bedtime

  Vogue Interview, April 1985.

  4 Copy quote

• fear is a dreadful drawback because it stops us living in the moment.

  Edna O'Brien

  Fear, Live In The Moment, Moments

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Edna O'Brien

  Book, Space, Chairs

  8 Copy quote

• ... a country encapsulates our childhood and those lanes, byres, fields, flowers, insects, suns, moons and stars are forever reoccurring.

  Edna O'Brien

  Country, Stars, Flower

  21 Copy quote

• Oh, God, who does not exist, you hate women, otherwise you'd have made them different. And Jesus, who snubbed your mother, you hate them more.

  Edna O'Brien

  Mother, Jesus, Hate

  Edna O'Brien (1978). “Seven novels and other short stories”, HarperCollins

  4 Copy quote

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