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. Edna O'Brien More Quotes by Edna O'Brien More Quotes From Edna O'Brien 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. Edna O'Brien mets parent children There are times when the thing we are seeing changes before our very eyes, and if it is a landscape we praise nature, and if it is celestial we invoke God, but if it is a loved one who defects, we excuse ourselves and say we have to be somewhere and are already late for our next appointment. We do not stay to put pennies over the half-dead eyes. Edna O'Brien landscape eye half She said the reason that love is so painful is that it always amounts to two people wanting more than two people can give. Edna O'Brien love-is two people I did not sleep. I never do when I am over-happy, over-unhappy, or in bed with a strange man. Edna O'Brien dating sleep men 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. Edna O'Brien chairs space book In every question and every remark tossed back and forth between lovers who have not played out the last fugue, there is one question and it is this: Is there someone new? Edna O'Brien back-and-forth lasts lovers I always want to be in love, always. It's like being a tuning fork. Edna O'Brien forks tuning want I have always espoused chastity except when one can no longer resist the temptation. Edna O'Brien chastity temptation Writing is like carrying a fetus. Edna O'Brien fetus writing 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. Edna O'Brien lonely mother beautiful After that dark woman you search for someone who will fit into the irregular corners of your heart. Edna O'Brien fit dark heart 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. Edna O'Brien childhood fatherhood trying I was lonelier than I should be, for a woman in love, or half in love. Edna O'Brien half should I know the mistake I am making. I see the exits in life. Edna O'Brien exit knows mistake Countries are either mothers or fathers, and engender the emotional bristle secretly reserved for either sire. Edna O'Brien mother country father Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it. Edna O'Brien recollection servant i-can We hide the truer part of ourselves when we love. Edna O'Brien never forget this moment, the hum of the bee, the saffron threads of the flower, the drawn blinds, nature's assiduousness and human cruelty. Edna O'Brien saffron flower bees 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. Edna O'Brien cells self people 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. Edna O'Brien men night school
