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
faces firsts madness
It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.
self cells people
All my life I had feared imprisonment, the nun's cell, the hospital bed, the places where one faced the self without distraction, without the crutches of other people.
teeth sin holy
If the Holy Communion touched my teeth, I thought that was a mortal sin
moments inadequate
In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things.
school night men
IT WAS TESS who told me about the crowd going to the all-night dance. We'd been school friends. We'd picked mushrooms and pretended to have seen a big ship. She had got married since I went away; it was a made match, a man from the midlands, a Donal, who had worked in a garage but took to farming, out all day, draining fields and callows so that he could till them and sow corn.
horse mushrooms ponies
Wherever there were horses or ponies the mushrooms always sprang up.
beautiful mother lonely
Later as the day cools and they have gone in, the cry of the corncrake will carry across those same fields and over the lake to the blue-hazed mountain, such a lonely evening sound to it, like the lonely evening sound of the mothers, saying it is not our fault that we weep so, it is nature's fault that makes us first full, then empty.
nurse training calling
She was an auxiliary nurse but training to be a true nurse because that was her calling, to serve mankind. She was a Martha. There were Marys and Marthas, but Marys got all the limelight because of being Christ's handmaiden, but Marthas were far more sincere.
kindness all-kinds unkind
Kindness. The most unkind thing of all.
dam stop work
My hand does the work and I don't have to think; in fact, were I to think, it would stop the flow. It's like a dam in the brain that bursts.
competition prefer trust women
I have some women friends but I prefer men. Don't trust women. There is a built-in competition between women.