“Your brother says he will sever all ties with us unless we do as he asks and sign Rusheen over to him.” — Edna O'Brien Brotherhood Copy Share Image
“that circular loop was fatal. Patsy giving them their Latin name, herpes zoster, describing how the pain attacked the line of the… — Edna O'Brien Latin Words 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 Admire Copy Share Image
I am obsessive, also I am industrious. Besides, the time when you are most alive and most aware is in childhood and… — Edna O'Brien Alive Copy Share Image
“Horses are the ruination of everyone, your father has a craze for them but then we all do crazy things.” — Edna O'Brien Crazy things Copy Share Image
Later as the day cools and they have gone in, the cry of the corncrake will carry across those same fields and… — Edna O'Brien Beautiful Copy Share Image
“Mr. Coaxyoram himself and many a young girl soft on him, but oh, what a gentleman and from a scion of gentlemen.… — Edna O'Brien Engagement ring 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 Books Copy Share Image
“pouring her troubles out in order for her daughter to know the deep things, the wounds she had to bear:” — Edna O'Brien Children Copy Share Image
“she wants to give her Rusheen, she wants to go out home just for the day and go back to the same… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
“she goes out to the clothesline to hang a few things, his things, her things, and a load of tea cloths.” — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
“The day I brought my suicide dream he got quite conversant. The dream was thus. I had gone to Holland to avail… — Edna O'Brien Dreams Copy Share Image
“is the unseen guest at every table, the silent listener to every conversation”—her mother thereby inferring that she too would be the… — Edna O'Brien Communication Copy Share Image
“A work is completed without deference to a husband, an absurd epic of maudlin childhood is about to be sent to a… — Edna O'Brien Marriage Copy Share Image
“I cannot be certain what I would have said. I knew that there was something sad and faintly distasteful about love's ending,… — Edna O'Brien Love Copy Share Image
The other me, who did not mean to drown herself, went under the sea and remained there for a long time. Eventually… — Edna O'Brien Care Copy Share Image
“Quite unselfconsciously she ran her hands along her neck, all along the sides and then to the back to feel the stiffnesses,… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
Countries are either mothers or fathers, and engender the emotional bristle secretly reserved for either sire. — Edna O'Brien Country Copy Share Image
“But we want young men. Romance. Love and things," I said, despondently.” — Edna O'Brien Love Copy Share Image
“The night before I left home, there was the wake in our kitchen as was the custom for anyone going so far… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
“The curtain of worldly desire must be ripped in half and I must look into my own soul and overcome the pit… — Edna O'Brien Meditation Copy Share Image
“Oh, God, who does not exist, you hate women, otherwise you'd have made them different. And Jesus, who snubbed your mother, you… — Edna O'Brien Foul language Copy Share Image
