Edna O'Brien Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.

  Edna O'Brien

  Servant, Recollection, I Can

  8 Copy quote

• Countries are either mothers or fathers, and engender the emotional bristle secretly reserved for either sire.

  Edna O'Brien

  Mother, Country, Father

  8 Copy quote

• All my life I had feared imprisonment, the nun's cell, the hospital bed, the places where one faced the self without distraction, without the crutches of other people.

  Edna O'Brien

  Self, Cells, People

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

  6 Copy quote

• August is a wicked month.

  Edna O'Brien

  August, Wicked, Months

  Edna O'Brien (2016). “August is a Wicked Month”

  4 Copy quote

• I was lonelier than I should be, for a woman in love, or half in love.

  Edna O'Brien

  Half, Should

  Edna O'Brien (2012). “Country Girl”, p.95, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• After that dark woman you search for someone who will fit into the irregular corners of your heart.

  Edna O'Brien

  Heart, Dark, Fit

  Edna O'Brien (2012). “Country Girl”, p.84, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• In every question and every remark tossed back and forth between lovers who have not played out the last fugue, there is one question and it is this: Is there someone new?

  Edna O'Brien

  Lasts, Lovers, Back And Forth

  7 Copy quote

• I knew I had done something awful. I had killed love, before I even knew the enormity of what love meant.

  Edna O'Brien

  Love Is, Done, Awful

  Edna O'Brien (2012). “Country Girl”, p.39, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.

  Edna O'Brien

  Writing, Heart, Cutting

  Edna O'Brien (2012). “Country Girl”, p.123, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• Wherever there were horses or ponies the mushrooms always sprang up.

  Edna O'Brien

  Horse, Mushrooms, Ponies

  Edna O'Brien (2007). “The Light of Evening”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• When you fall in love, it is spring no matter when. Leaves falling make no difference, they are from another season.

  Edna O'Brien

  Falling In Love, Spring, Differences

  4 Copy quote

• She was an auxiliary nurse but training to be a true nurse because that was her calling, to serve mankind. She was a Martha. There were Marys and Marthas, but Marys got all the limelight because of being Christ's handmaiden, but Marthas were far more sincere.

  Edna O'Brien

  Nurse, Training, Calling

  Edna O'Brien (2007). “The Light of Evening”, p.41, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• There was I, devouring books and yet allowing a man who had never read a book to walk me home for a bit of harmless fumbling on the front steps.

  Edna O'Brien

  Book, Home, Men

  Edna O'Brien (2012). “Country Girl”, p.89, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• jealousy is the direct result of self-betrayal.

  Edna O'Brien

  Jealousy, Betrayal, Self

  4 Copy quote

• Later as the day cools and they have gone in, the cry of the corncrake will carry across those same fields and over the lake to the blue-hazed mountain, such a lonely evening sound to it, like the lonely evening sound of the mothers, saying it is not our fault that we weep so, it is nature's fault that makes us first full, then empty.

  Edna O'Brien

  Beautiful, Mother, Lonely

  Edna O'Brien (2007). “The Light of Evening”, p.7, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• Kindness. The most unkind thing of all.

  Edna O'Brien

  Kindness, All Kinds, Unkind

  4 Copy quote

• Life, after all, was a secret with the self. The more one gave out, the less there remained for the center--that center which she coveted for herself and recognized instantly in others. Fruits had it, the very heart of, say, a cherry, where the true worth and flavor lay. Some of course were flawed or hollow in there. Many, in fact.

  Edna O'Brien

  Heart, Self, Secret

  7 Copy quote

• Movie people are possessed by demons, but a very low form of demons.

  Edna O'Brien

  People, Demon, Form

  6 Copy quote

• Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world.

  Edna O'Brien

  Running, Responsibility, World

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Light, Darkness, Doe

  Edna O'Brien (2003). “In the Forest”, p.259, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• shadows of love, inebriations of love, foretastes of love, trickles of love, but never yet the one true love.

  Edna O'Brien

  Shadow, Shadow Of Love, Inebriation

  Edna O'Brien (2014). “Night”, p.103, Faber & Faber

  9 Copy quote

• I'm a tuning fork, tense and twanging all the time.

  Edna O'Brien

  Tuning, Forks, Tense

  4 Copy quote

• The other me, who did not mean to drown herself, went under the sea and remained there for a long time. Eventually she surfaced near Japan and people gave her gifts but she had been so long under the sea she did not recognize what they were. She is a sly one. Mostly at night we commune. Night. Harbinger of dream and nightmare and bearer of omens which defy the music of words. In the morning the fear of her going is very real and very alarming. It can make one tremble. Not that she cares. She is the muse. I am the messenger.

  Edna O'Brien

  Dream, Morning, Real

  7 Copy quote

• My hand does the work and I dont have to think; in fact, were I to think, it would stop the flow. Its like a dam in the brain that bursts.

  Edna O'Brien

  Thinking, Hands, Brain

  18 Copy quote

• I know the mistake I am making. I see the exits in life.

  Edna O'Brien

  Mistake, Exit, Knows

  Edna O'Brien (1985). “A Fanatic Heart: Selected Stories of Edna O'Brien”, Plume

  5 Copy quote

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