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
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.
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...
women mean memorable
The vote means nothing to women. We should be armed.
people way ordinary
Ordinary life bypassed me, but I also bypassed it. It couldn't have been any other way.Conventional life and conventional people are not for me.
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.
long catholic guilt
I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.
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.
bystanders fiction said
History is said to be written by the victors. Fiction, by contrast, is largely the work of injured bystanders.
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.
sleep men dating
I did not sleep. I never do when I am over-happy, over-unhappy, or in bed with a strange man.
servant recollection i-can
Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.
book space chairs
Books everywhere. On the shelves and on the small space above the rows of books and all along the floor and under chairs, books that I have read, books that I have not read.
august wicked months
August is a wicked month.
sometimes recalls one-word
Sometimes one word can recall a whole span of life.