... we have so many voices in us, how do we know which ones to obey? — Edna O'Brien Knows Copy Share Image
I always want to be in love, always. It's like being a tuning fork. — Edna O'Brien Forks 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 Hang Things Copy Share Image
“so many that had died on the scaffold and many more to die including, though she did not know it then, her… — Edna O'Brien Died 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 Bystanders 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 Different 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 Afraid Copy Share Image
“Because I had hankered to go back to America, my husband-to-be agreed that we could go there for a year, while the… — Edna O'Brien Agreed Year Copy Share Image
“Dilly reckons it would be difficult to thread those needles, the eyes so small, especially with her cataracts.” — Edna O'Brien Heart Copy Share Image
I knew I had done something awful. I had killed love, before I even knew the enormity of what love meant. — Edna O'Brien Awful Copy Share Image
“Brush those tears from your eyes And try and realize That from now on I'll always be true. I went away But… — Edna O'Brien Regret 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 Fear Copy Share Image
“Nothing but rules. Rule the first: no callers at the front door. Rule the second: no callers at the back door. Rule… — Edna O'Brien Front door Copy Share Image
She was an auxiliary nurse but training to be a true nurse because that was her calling, to serve mankind. She was… — Edna O'Brien Calling Copy Share Image
“A mother with an infant but without a father was not welcomed in the new world. “You kilt it.” “She kilt it.”… — Edna O'Brien Father Copy Share Image
“lunch parties that the missus had for her girlfriends. Mamie and Gertie and Peg and Eunice. They were forever saying each other’s… — Edna O'Brien Missus Girlfriends Copy Share Image
“it would bring good luck. It was a silverfish with gold-threaded scales and when she put it in the palm of my… — Edna O'Brien Fish 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 Animal 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 Wants Home Copy Share Image
Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are… — Edna O'Brien Affair 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 Doubt Copy Share Image
“It was no longer her sleeping room, it was our sleeping room now. We made friends the night it thundered, big claps… — Edna O'Brien Friendship Copy Share Image
“Cornelius and Iggy were in the final round and their opponents, who were from the city, displeased and spiteful, not a sound… — Edna O'Brien Football 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
“THE TWO OTHER GIRLS in the room, Mabel and Deirdre, said I imagined it. But they were wrong. My brother appeared to… — Edna O'Brien Brother 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 Brother Copy Share Image
“most prized of all, her secretaire, a Napoleon III desk, full of nooks and crannies and pigeonholes,” — Edna O'Brien Writer 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… — Edna O'Brien Accident Copy Share Image
“Gabriel, the man she might have tied the knot with except that it was not meant to be. Putting memories to sleep,… — Edna O'Brien Gabriel Copy Share Image
When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious. — Edna O'Brien Ask me Copy Share Image
“I had not the heart to tell her that great love stories told of the pain and separateness between men and women.” — Edna O'Brien Love Copy Share Image
Irish Catholicism is very much founded on the stone of fear and of punishment. — Edna O'Brien Catholicism 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
“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
