Quotes by : Edna O'Brien

Fiction should be in its way subversive. I don't think books should be neat or gentle or genteel or comforting.....

It is impossible to capture the essence of love in writing, only its symptoms remain, the erotic absorption,....

I was lonelier than I should be, for a woman in love, or half in love.

Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions....

Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore....

That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart....

When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen,....

In a way winter is the real spring the time when the inner things happen the resurge of nature.

If the Holy Communion touched my teeth, I thought that was a mortal sin

When something has been perfect there is a tendency to try hard to repeat it.