All my life I had feared imprisonment, the nun's cell, the hospital bed, the places where one faced the self without distraction,… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
“her husband a grown man, afraid to sleep alone in his own house, he who for many a year struck terror into… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
“Dilly, do not ever forget your own people.” My brother came with me to wait for the mail car. He took off… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
Irish Catholicism is very much founded on the stone of fear and of punishment. — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
what makes us so afraid is the thing we half see, or half hear, as in a wood at dusk, when a… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
“suddenly the window flew open, swung back and forth on its hinges, as if something was about to come in, and she… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
fear is a dreadful drawback because it stops us living in the moment. — 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
