Edna O'Brien Quotes

Quotes about:

Books Children Country Flowers Heart Mothers Writing

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

40 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

27 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.

61 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

40 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

35 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

29 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

15 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

17 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).

24 Copy quote
The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.

Edna O'Brien

Women, Memorable, Mean

26 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

10 Copy quote
Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul.

Edna O'Brien

Soul, Mind, Bedtime

Vogue Interview, April 1985.

3 Copy quote
I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.

Edna O'Brien

Long, Catholic, Guilt

18 Copy quote
Writers, however mature and wise and eminent, are children at heart.

Edna O'Brien

Wise, Children, Heart

14 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

3 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

5 Copy quote
It's not the vote women need, we should be armed.

Edna O'Brien

Women, Needs, Vote

Edna O'Brien (2012). “Country Girl”, p.124, Faber & Faber

10 Copy quote
I am not kind, I cut people off as with shears and I drop them like nettles.

Edna O'Brien

Cutting, People, Kind

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

4 Copy quote
it is not good to repudiate the dead because then they do not leave you alone, they are like dogs that bark intermittently at night.

Edna O'Brien

Death, Dog, Night

Edna O'Brien (1974). “A Scandalous Woman, and Other Stories”

15 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

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

8 Copy quote
To live with the work and the letters of James Joyce was an enormous privilege and a daunting education. Yes, I came to admire Joyce even more because he never ceased working, those words and the transubstantiation of words obsessed him. He was a broken man at the end of his life, unaware that Ulysses would be the number one book of the twentieth century and, for that matter, the twenty-first.

Edna O'Brien

Book, Men, Numbers

18 Copy quote
Promiscuity is the death of love.

Edna O'Brien

Promiscuity

19 Copy quote
fear is a dreadful drawback because it stops us living in the moment.

Edna O'Brien

Fear, Live In The Moment, Moments

8 Copy quote
For me to write I have to be, a, alone, and b, know that nobody is going to question me. I write the way a thief steals; it's a little covert.

Edna O'Brien

Writing, Thieves, Littles

7 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Edna O'Brien

Follow

Born: December 15, 1930
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics