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
“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
“Is that Rococo, Pascal?” Chrissie said as she stood by the missus’s desk, peering into the nests of pigeonholes and cubbies. “Oh,… — Edna O'Brien Love letters Copy Share Image
“She had eloped in a trance, in haste, her docility a mask, a thousand hers revolting within herself and toward him. Yet… — Edna O'Brien Lasting love Copy Share Image
“they don’t talk at all only fight, the mother’s will was unclear, Edward got a field up the Commons that William wanted… — Edna O'Brien Dirty work Copy Share Image
“She was happy I was home, I would come often, I would be company,” — Edna O'Brien Business 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 Copy Share Image
“four of us slept in the one bed, two at the bottom and two at the top. All of us tossed and… — Edna O'Brien Sleep Copy Share Image
“divide things equally between both children? If anything should happen to her she is appealing to him to honor this final wish.… — Edna O'Brien Children Copy Share Image
My hand does the work and I dont have to think; in fact, were I to think, it would stop the flow.… — Edna O'Brien Brain 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 Anxious Copy Share Image
What we forgot as children is that our parents are children, also. The child in them has not been satisfied or met… — Edna O'Brien Children Copy Share Image
“one thing she does not want to come home to is the after-smell of milk gone sour, a lingering smell that disgusts… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
I am not kind, I cut people off as with shears and I drop them like nettles. — Edna O'Brien Cutting Copy Share Image
“evening when I got back from the convent where I worked part-time my clothes were in a bundle on the step, my… — Edna O'Brien Books Copy Share Image
“My mother is dead, my mother is dead,” she kept saying it in her numbed state, because it had not sunk in.… — Edna O'Brien Lost time Copy Share Image
Writing is the product of a deeply disturbed psyche, and by no means therapeutic. — Edna O'Brien Disturbed Copy Share Image
“I would not leave a mother alone in her plight. They described how she had kept the news of my brother’s death… — Edna O'Brien Death Copy Share Image
“Their eyes meet and part, each staring into the forlorn space, a shaft of disappointment, he because he is unable to help… — Edna O'Brien Copy Share Image
