Edna O'Brien
Edna O'Brien
Edna O'Brienis an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short story writer. Philip Roth has described her "the most gifted woman now writing in English", while former President of Ireland Mary Robinson has cited her as "one of the great creative writers of her generation."...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth15 December 1932
CountryIreland
fate individual existence
It is increasingly clear that the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence.
long catholic guilt
I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.
bystanders fiction said
History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders.
character tree ireland-and-the-irish
When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.
country philosophy odds
Irish? In truth I would not want to be anything else. It is a state of mind as well as an actual country. It is being at odds withother nationalities, having quite different philosophy about pleasure, about punishment, about life, and about death. At least it does not leave one pusillanimous.
book men numbers
To live with the work and the letters of James Joyce was an enormous privilege and a daunting education. Yes, I came to admire Joyce even more because he never ceased working, those words and the transubstantiation of words obsessed him. He was a broken man at the end of his life, unaware that Ulysses would be the number one book of the twentieth century and, for that matter, the twenty-first.
women mean memorable
The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.
sleep men dating
I did not sleep. I never do when I am over-happy, over-unhappy, or in bed with a strange man.
knowing different persons
We all leave one another. We die, we change - it's mostly change - we outgrow our best friends; but even if I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it's inescapable...
children parent mets
What we forgot as children is that our parents are children, also. The child in them has not been satisfied or met or loved, often.
death dog night
it is not good to repudiate the dead because then they do not leave you alone, they are like dogs that bark intermittently at night.
We hide the truer part of ourselves when we love.
wise children heart
Writers, however mature and wise and eminent, are children at heart.
punishment religion stones
Irish Catholicism is very much founded on the stone of fear and of punishment.