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Flann O'Brien Quotes

Brian O'Nolan , better known by his pen name Flann O'Brien, was an Irish novelist, playwright and satirist, considered a major figure in twentieth century Irish literature. Born in Strabane, County Tyrone, he is regarded as a key figure in modernist and postmodern literature. His English language novels, such as At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman, were written under the O’Brien pen name. His many satirical columns in The Irish Times and an Irish language novel An Béal Bocht were written under the name Myles na gCopaleen.

O'Brien's novels have attracted a wide following for their bizarre humour and modernist metafiction. As a novelist, O'Brien was influenced by James Joyce. He was nonetheless sceptical of the cult of Joyce, which overshadows much of Irish writing, saying "I declare to God if I hear that name Joyce one more time I will surely froth at the gob." Wikipedia  

✵ 5. October 1911 – 1. April 1966

Works

The Third Policeman
The Third Policeman
Flann O'Brien
At Swim-Two-Birds
At Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien
The Dalkey Archive
The Dalkey Archive
Flann O'Brien
The Third Policeman
The Third Policeman
Flann O'Brien
At Swim-Two-Birds
At Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien
The Dalkey Archive
The Dalkey Archive
Flann O'Brien
Flann O'Brien: 30 quotes2 likes

Famous Flann O'Brien Quotes

“I saw that my witticism was unperceived and quietly replaced it in the treasury of my mind.”

Flann O'Brien book At Swim-Two-Birds

Source: "At Swim-Two-Birds" (1939)

“You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman (1967)

“Descartes spent far too much time in bed subject to the persistent hallucination that he was thinking. You are not free from a similar disorder.”

Flann O'Brien book The Dalkey Archive

"The Dalkey archive" (1964)
Source: The Dalkey Archive

“Anybody who has the courage to raise his eyes and look sanely at the awful human condition… must realize finally that tiny periods of temporary release from intolerable suffering is the most that any individual has the right to expect.”

Flann O'Brien

“Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

Source: The Third Policeman (1967)

“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

Source: The Third Policeman (1967)

Flann O'Brien Quotes about thinking

“I am completely half afraid to think.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

Source: The Third Policeman (1967)

“What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

Source: The Third Policeman

“I felt so sad and so entirely disappointed that tears came into my eyes and a lump of incommunicable poignancy swelled tragically in my throat. I began to feel intensely every fragment of my equal humanity. The life that was bubbling at the end of my fingers was real and nearly painful in intensity and so was the beauty of my warm face and the loose humanity of my limbs and the racy health of my red rich blood. To leave it all without good reason and to smash the little empire into small fragments was a thing too pitiful even to refuse to think about.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman (1967)

“After a time," said old Mathers disregarding me, "I mercifully perceived the errors of my ways and the unhappy destination I would reach unless I mended them. I retired from the world in order to try to comprehend it and to find out why it becomes more unsavoury as the years accumulate on a man's body. What do you think I discovered at the end of my meditations?”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman (1967)

Flann O'Brien Quotes about life

“When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night,
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.”

Flann O'Brien book At Swim-Two-Birds

Source: At Swim-Two-Birds

“Is it life? I would rather be without it, for there is quare small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night's porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed jars and foreign bacon. Many a man has spent a hundred years trying to get the dimensions of it and when he understands it at last and entertains the certain pattern of it in his head, be the hokey he takes to his bed and dies. He dies like a poisoned sheepdog. There is nothing so dangerous you can't smoke it, nobody will give you tuppence halfpenny for the half of it, and it kills you in the wind-up. It is a quare contraption, very dangerous, a certain death-trap.”

Flann O'Brien

Page 165
The Various Lives Of Keats And Chapman (2010)

“Is it life?" he answered, "I would rather be without it," he said, "for there is queer small utility in it. You cannot eat it or drink it or smoke it in your pipe, it does not keep the rain out and it is a poor armful in the dark if you strip it and take it to bed with you after a night of porter when you are shivering with the red passion. It is a great mistake and a thing better done without, like bed-jars and foreign bacon.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman (1967)

Flann O'Brien Quotes

“A wise old owl once lived in a wood, the more he heard the less he said, the less he said the more he heard, let's emulate that wise old bird.”

Flann O'Brien book At Swim-Two-Birds

Source: At Swim-Two-Birds

“Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country.”

Flann O'Brien

Source: The Best of Myles (1968)

“When money's tight and is hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt
A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.”

Flann O'Brien

“Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

Source: The Third Policeman (1967)

“Often in the theatre I can hardly hear myself talking or assuring my doxy that so-and-so is the same fellow that played so-and-so in so-and-so, he's very good, he's a civil servant in the Department of Agriculture, I met a sister of his in Skerries, and so on. Actors should conduct themselves like the rest of us and practise the unobtrusive intonation of the gentleman.”

Flann O'Brien

Page 37
The Best of Myles (1968)

“The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

Page 85
The Third Policeman (1967)

“When things go wrong and will not come right”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman (1967)

“My father…was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman (1967)

“One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.”

Flann O'Brien

Source: "At Swim-Two-Birds" (1939), P. 9.

“The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at a crossroads.”

Flann O'Brien

Page 171
The Hair of the Dogma (1977)

“You told me what the first rule of wisdom is," I said. "What is the second rule?"
"That can be answered," he said. "There are five in all. Always ask any questions that are to be asked and never answer any. Turn everything you hear to your own advantage. Always carry a repair outfit. Take left turns as much as possible. Never apply your front brake first…If you follow them," said the Sergeant, "you will save your soul and you will never get a fall on a slippy road.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

Page 60
The Third Policeman (1967)

“Some savage faculty for observation told him that most respectable and estimable people usually had a lot of books in their houses.”

Flann O'Brien

Page 17
The Best of Myles (1968)

“It cannot be too often repeated that I am not for sale. I was bought in 1921 and the transaction was final and conclusive.”

Flann O'Brien

Page 282
The Best of Myles (1968)

“If Irish were to die completely, the standard of English here, both in the spoken and written word, would sink to a level probably as low as that obtaining in England and it would stop there only because it could go no lower.”

Flann O'Brien

Page 283
The Best of Myles (1968)

“Do you know what I am going to tell you, he said with his wry mouth, a pint of plain is your only man.”

Flann O'Brien

Source: "At Swim-Two-Birds" (1939), P. 22.

“Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill.”

Flann O'Brien

Page 143
The Hair of the Dogma (1977)

“"Who is Fox?", I asked.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

The Third Policeman (1967)

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