Edna O'Brien
Edna O'Brien
Edna O'Brienis an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short story writer. Philip Roth has described her "the most gifted woman now writing in English", while former President of Ireland Mary Robinson has cited her as "one of the great creative writers of her generation."...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth15 December 1932
CountryIreland
mind literature lasts
literature is the last banquet between minds.
cutting people kind
I am not kind, I cut people off as with shears and I drop them like nettles.
real games people
There was always a real reason for everything - why spoons tarnished, and jam furred, and people declined into God, or drink, or card games.
temptation chastity
I have always espoused chastity except when one can no longer resist the temptation.
fear animal knowing
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.
fear live-in-the-moment moments
fear is a dreadful drawback because it stops us living in the moment.
jealousy betrayal self
jealousy is the direct result of self-betrayal.
kindness all-kinds unkind
Kindness. The most unkind thing of all.
thinking hands brain
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.
men competition built
I have some women friends but I prefer men. Dont trust women. There is a built-in competition between women.
lasts lovers back-and-forth
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?
tuning forks tense
I'm a tuning fork, tense and twanging all the time....
book space chairs
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.
servant recollection i-can
Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.