Edna O'Brien Quotes

Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind toward some resolution which it may never find.

I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us.

The dead are too much with us.

In dealing with the dead, if we treat them as if they were entirely dead, that would show a want of affection and should not be done; or, if we treat them as if they were entirely alive, that would show a want of wisdom and should not be done.

What does one do about the dead? They live forever.

Everything that belonged to her husband made her weep again: his tasseled slippers, his pajamas under the pillow, the space of his absence in the dressing table mirror, his own odor on her skin. A vague thought made her shudder: "The people one loves should take all their things with them when they die.

For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead. Well said one of his friend, "Thou half of my soul"; for I felt that my soul and his soul were "one soul in two bodies": and therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved. And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved should die wholly.

I kissed him, trying to bring him back. I kissed him and let my lips rest against his so that our breath mingled and the tears from my eyes became salt on his skin, and I told myself that, somewhere, tiny particles of him would become tiny particles of me, ingested, swallowed, alive, perpetual. I wanted to press every bit of me against him. I wanted to will something into him. I wanted to give him every bit of life I felt and force him to live.

Ah what avails the sceptred race, Ah what the form divine! What every virtue, every grace! Rose Aylmer, all were thine. Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and of sighs I consecrate to thee.

They say death comes like a thief in the night, where is he? I'll hug his neck.

But when the dust has drunk the blood of men, no resurrection comes for one who's dead.

And my poor fool is hanged! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never! Pray you, undo this button.

I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more.

One night awaits all, and death's path must be trodden once and for all.

When the friends we love the best Lie in their churchyard bed, We must not cry too bitterly Over the happy dead.

It is the first day of November and so, today, someone will die.

A cemetery saddens us because it is the only place of the world in which we do not meet our dead again.

You are never truly together with one you love until the person in question is dead and actually inside you.

In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face the face of one long dead Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.

You know a guy a longtime, and I mean really know him, you don't get used to the idea that he's dead just overnight.

Pity that the only way to paradise is in a hearse.

Oh, my Margaret--my Margaret! no one can tell what you are to me! Dead--cold as you lie there you are the only woman I ever loved! Oh, Margaret--Margaret!

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking, morn of toil, nor night of waking.

There was no air; only the dead, still night fired by the dog days of August. Not a breath. I had to suck in the same air I exhaled, cupping it in my hands before it escaped. I felt it, in and out, less each time…until it was so thin it slipped through my fingers forever. I mean, forever.