Edna O'Brien Quotes

I do, in fact, have a book club. I meet with a couple of guys once a month of a lunchtime discussion of some interesting text, usually, but not always, philosophical.

I like the language in Proust but not the context.

Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.

I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.

I'm sure Proust was a big bore.

Talking to men for God is a great thing, but talking to God for men is greater still.

If prayer is you talking to God, then intuition is God talking to you.

What Hamlet suffers from is a lack of zombies. Let us say Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up—Ho-HO! Now you’ve got something that stirs the, um, something that stirs things that are stirrable. BOOM! A pack of ravenous flesh-eaters breaks open their heads and sucks out their eyeballs. No need for iambic pentameter because they are grunting, groaning annihilators of humanity with no time for meter. You’re not asleep in the back of English class anymore, are you? This is what I’m talking about. Zombies. Learn it, live it, love it.

God told me if I painted that mountain enough, I could have it.

In those days he really didn't know what he was talking about; that is to say, he was a young jailkid all hung-up on the wonderful possibilities of becoming a real intellectual, and he liked to talk in the tone and using the words, but in a jumbled way, that he had heard from 'real intellectuals.

Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it's been shaped into acceptable expository prose.

I read world literature and I read French romances in the originals. I had quite a profound knowledge - no, that sounds conceited, but I did have a profound interest in everything spiritual.

It was what God had taught me growing up that helped me overcome my fear and get back on the board. 'Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go' (Joshua 1:9).

Take [Stéphane] Mallarme. I hold him to be the greatest of French poets, and I have taken some time to understand him !

One way you can get really close to God is to sin as hard as you can.

Both Proust and Joyce record the ways in which human perspectives can be transformed. In Portrait, Stephen Dedalus is constantly undergoing epiphanies, but their effects are transitory: the new synthetic complex quickly falls apart. Proust's characters, by contrast, often achieve lasting changes of perspective.

I wish I could meet a Christian who would proselytize to me, but they keep running away from me. I wanna talk to you all.

Maybe we need more dialogue in terms of our faith, in terms of those who are believers, or even nonbelievers, about that aspect, and what that might mean if you were interpreting. You don't have to believe it; maybe you could draw a metaphor from it.

How wonderful it is that we believe in modern revelation. I cannot get over the feeling that if revelation were needed anciently, when life was simple, that revelation is also needed today, when life is complex. There never was a time in the history of the earth when men needed revelation more than they need it now.

I think I'm much more comfortable talking about other books than my own!

Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place.

It should not be Illiers-Combray that we visit: a genuine homage to Proust would be to look at our world through his eyes, not look at his world through our eyes.

We cannot define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into the paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, "You don't know what you are talking about!" The second one says, "What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?"

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.