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
cutting people kind
I am not kind, I cut people off as with shears and I drop them like nettles.
perfect trying tendencies
When something has been perfect, there is a tendency to try hard to repeat it.
lonely
You have to be lonely to be a writer
heart dark fit
After that dark woman you search for someone who will fit into the irregular corners of your heart.
kissing cities vastness
Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are walking by the seashore, footprint after footprint of trodden sand, and somehow the kiss or the spoken covenant gets lost in the vastness and indifference of nature. In a city there are places to remind us of what has been.
heart self secret
Life, after all, was a secret with the self. The more one gave out, the less there remained for the center--that center which she coveted for herself and recognized instantly in others. Fruits had it, the very heart of, say, a cherry, where the true worth and flavor lay. Some of course were flawed or hollow in there. Many, in fact.
love-is awful done
I knew I had done something awful. I had killed love, before I even knew the enormity of what love meant.
grew creatures
Oh, love, what an unreasoning creature it grew to be.
childhood trying alive
I am obsessive, also I am industrious. Besides, the time when you are most alive and most aware is in childhood and one is trying to recapture that heightened awareness.
real spring winter
In a way Winter is the real Spring - the time when the inner things happen, the resurgence of nature.
death way birth
Death in its way comes just as much of a surprise as birth.
soul mind hotel
Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul.
light darkness doe
Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.
writing heart cutting
That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.