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Edna O'Brien Quotes
1930–2024 Ireland
Josephine Edna O'Brien (15 December 1930 – 27 July 2024) was an Irish novelist, short-story writer and playwright, who was resident in the United Kingdom from the late-1950s. Her first seven novels were banned in Ireland on publication, but she found an appreciative audience in her adopted country and in the United States.
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She said the reason that love is so painful is that it always amounts to two people wanting more than two people can give.
Never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature's assiduousness and human cruelty.
The Light of Evening (2006)
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.
That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.
Country Girl: a Memoir (2012)
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.
The vote, I thought, means nothing to women, we should be armed.
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.
I don't think I have ever learned the game of men and women. To this day I regret the fact that it's like a dance I couldn't learn.
"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."
Girl With Green Eyes (1962)
Writing of any experience, male or female, is difficult. One has to keep one's eyes and ears open and then delve into the imagination.
Irish Women Writers Speak Out (2003)
There's nothing like obstacle to make a writer
Tasting Life Twice (2005)
What literature does, if it's any good, is to open the soul, the mind, the psyche and the body of a reader. I'm always looking for that - and in some cases getting into trouble for even attempting it.
Tasting Life Twice (2005)
Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul. (Vogue, April 1985)
I waked quickly and sat up in bed abruptly. It is only when I am anxious that I awaken easily, and for a minute I could not remember what it was. Then I remembered, the old reason: he had not come home, my father.
The Country Girls (1960)
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