117 Quotes by Edna O'Brien

Writers are always anxious, always on the run – from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world.

Their eyes meet and part, each staring into the forlorn space, a shaft of disappointment, he because he is unable to help her and she because she is thrown back into her own quagmire of uncertainty.

Oh, God, who does not exist, you hate women, otherwise you’d have made them different. And Jesus, who snubbed your mother, you hate them more.

The wall was a symbol of protests, inch upon inch covered with graffiti, in red, blue, yellow, purple, indigo, magenta, terracotta, a tableau of screaming indignations.

There was always a real reason for everything – why spoons tarnished, and jam furred, and people declined into God, or drink, or card games.

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.

I hear stories. It could be myself telling them to myself or it could be these murmurs that come out of the earth. The earth so old and haunted, so hungry and replete. It talks. Things past and things yet to be.

Yes, the living, the mangled, the scarified, with the crazed responsibility of remembering everything, everything.

I tend not to look at the prison wall of life, but to look up at the sky, as it is more beautiful and more spacious. Try.