That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open. — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world. — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
Writing is the product of a deeply disturbed psyche, and by no means therapeutic. — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
“most prized of all, her secretaire, a Napoleon III desk, full of nooks and crannies and pigeonholes,” — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
“He never studied, not a paper, not a textbook . . . the books he reads are the people that come to him,” — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
For me to write I have to be, a, alone, and b, know that nobody is going to question me. I write… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Fiction should be in its way subversive. I don't think books should be neat or gentle or genteel or comforting. I think… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
Books everywhere. On the shelves and on the small space above the rows of books and all along the floor and under… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
To live with the work and the letters of James Joyce was an enormous privilege and a daunting education. Yes, I came… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
... a country encapsulates our childhood and those lanes, byres, fields, flowers, insects, suns, moons and stars are forever reoccurring. — Edna O'Brien Copy Share
I crossed the room, and what you did was to feel my hair over and over again and in different ways, touch it, with… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share
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 Copy Share
History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders. — Edna O'Brien Copy Share
“A healer! The beauty of the word a balm. In a mounting astonishment she hears how this man heals with his own blood, pricks… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share
“If I could feel like myself I’d thank God but I don’t feel and never will.” — Edna O'Brien Copy Share
...people liking you or not liking you is an accident and is to do with them and not you. That goes for love too,… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share
“tears running down her cheeks and her nose, tears from the cold and the prospect of being absent for weeks.” — Edna O'Brien Copy Share
“laughter filling that end of the ward, overflowing, one bringing a chair for Eleanora, another a cup of coffee, marveling that at long last… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share
“Dilly reckons it would be difficult to thread those needles, the eyes so small, especially with her cataracts.” — Edna O'Brien Copy Share
