Edna O'Brien quotes

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)
The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.
Edna O'Brien
Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul.
Edna O'Brien
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
I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.
Edna O'Brien
In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.
Edna O'Brien
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
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
Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.
Edna O'Brien
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
I have some women friends but I prefer men. Dont trust women. There is a built-in competition between women. (Edna O'Brien)
I was lonelier than I should be, for a woman in love, or half in love.
Edna O'Brien
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
... we have so many voices in us, how do we know which ones to obey?
Edna O'Brien
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
Ideally I'd like to spend two evenings a week talking to Proust and another conversing with the Holy Ghost.
Edna O'Brien
When you fall in love, it is spring no matter when. Leaves falling make no difference, they are from another season.
Edna O'Brien
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
When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.
Edna O'Brien
Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world.
Edna O'Brien
... 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)
She has always ridden the passions as if they were a magnificent horse.
Edna O'Brien
I am obsessive, also I am industrious. Besides, the time when you are most alive and most aware is in childhood and one is trying to recapture that heightened awareness.
Edna O'Brien
Writing is like carrying a fetus.
Edna O'Brien
History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders.
Edna O'Brien