Edna O'Brien Quotes

I was one of those dark, quiet kids that wrote poetry.

Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.

Everything has a sort of double meaning for me, there's the ordinary everyday meaning of things, and the imaginary meaning about it all, and I wanted to bring these things together, and in this first big Resurrection of mine you have a good example of this sort of thing.

There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide.

I get caught up in my bubble of reading, writing, or music.

Art is the window to man's soul. Without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world; nor could the world see the man within.

In my subconscious, my books were part of a single emotional journey.

I just have a relationship with my imagination. It's like my friend, almost.

To me, music is more like a spiritual seeking that takes one to unknown levels.

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words.

While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.

But I'm more of a recluse when it comes down to being a writer and being a creative person rather than being a celebrity.

A poet is a world enclosed in a man.

In my head there is a whole army of people asking to be let out and waiting for the word of command.

To know, to think, to dream. That is everything.

Personally I kept my feelings out of it and created a fantasy. That's the process of going through this world being beautiful.

I think whatever is going on with my brain, I'm very, very - and I'm not saying this as a positive thing, it's just a fact - I'm very creative. I have a very strong imagination, and have since I was a little kid. That is where a lot of my world comes from. It's like I'm off somewhere else. And I can have a problem in life because of that, because I'm always off in some other world thinking about something else. It's constant.

You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary - it's always imaginary - world in which I would like to live.

Imagination is strong in a man when that particular function of the brain which enables him to observe is roused to activity without any necessary excitement of the sense. Accordingly, we find that imagination is active just in proportion as our sense are not excited by external objects. A long period of solitude, whether in prison or in a sick room; quiet, twilight, darkness-these are the things that promote its activity; and under their influence it comes into play of itself.

To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling. It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.

I never make studies from nature. They would get in the way. I make use of my mind.

Imagination flourishes best in solitude.

A writer's subconscious is one of the filthiest places there are: as a matter of fact, you can find the whole world there.

When you find yourself alone, or in a transition, you dream more. These are also the times when you read books.