Edna O'Brien citations

“We all leave one another. We die, we change - it's mostly change - we outgrow our best friends; but even if I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it's inescapable…”

“Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.”

“When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.”

“She said the reason that love is so painful is that it always amounts to two people wanting more than two people can give.”

“Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world.”

“… people liking you or not liking you is an accident and is to do with them and not you. That goes for love too, only more so.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Writers really live in the mind and in hotels of the soul.”

“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 vote, I thought, means nothing to women, we should be armed.”

“She has always ridden the passions as if they were a magnificent horse.”