Edna O'Brien - Painful Quotes

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[A novel] has a right and a duty to ask very painful and difficult questions. It doesn't solve them, but it asks them.

Edna O'Brien

I never write about simple, gentle things, and I never will. It's not being sensational. I hate sensational books. Unless we look at dark and covered painful wounds, we can never heal them.

Edna O'Brien

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

Edna O'Brien

Every day in Ireland, or at least every week, there's another story of a baby found on a river bank or of some dark, covert, incestuous family. An abortion must be such a painful and excruciating decision that to combine it then with half a community jumping down your neck telling you you're dealing in murder, I think that's awful.

Edna O'Brien