“It is impossible to capture the essence of love in writing, only its symptoms remain, the erotic absorption, the huge disparity between the times together and the times apart, the sense of being excluded.” — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders. — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“If I could feel like myself I’d thank God but I don’t feel and never will.” — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
...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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“Dilly reckons it would be difficult to thread those needles, the eyes so small, especially with her cataracts.” — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
