Edna O'Brien quotes

Edna O'Brien is an acclaimed Irish novelist recognized for her groundbreaking exploration of women's lives and experiences in Irish society. Her debut novel, "The Country Girls," challenged social norms and faced censorship, helping to usher in a new era of Irish literature. She has received numerous international awards and continues to influence generations of writers. Here are 47 of her quotes:

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 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

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