The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue Quotes

“Life, after all, was a secret with the self. The more one gave out, the less there remained for the center--that center which she coveted for herself and recognized instantly in others. Fruits had it, the very heart of, say, a cherry, where the true worth and flavor lay. Some of course were flawed or hollow in there. Many, in fact. ”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy 'the Country Girls', ' the Lonely Girl', 'Girls in Their Married Bliss

“He probably knew that any man she took up with now would only pay in pain for what had happened between her and Eugene; the brutal logic of wronged lovers taking their revenge on innocents and outsiders.”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy & Epilogue [The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl, Girls in their married bliss].

“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...”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue

“Useless to say that I hadn't thought of him when I was doing it. Useless to say that I always thought your acquaintanceship with one person had nothing to do with another. Or to say all the things that went on in my head, the longings, for songs, cigarettes, dark bars, telegrams, cacti, combs in your hair, the circus, nights out, life. He wouldn't understand.”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy & Epilogue [The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl, Girls in their married bliss].

“--, carp, bleak, bream.'
They did not sound like the names of fish at all, but like a litany of moods that any woman might feel any Monday morning after she'd hung out her washing and caught a glimpse of a ravishing man going somewhere alone in a motorcar.”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy & Epilogue [The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl, Girls in their married bliss].

“The good and the bad of him alternated in my thoughts, as I remembered first his scowling expression and his unyielding nature and then his tenderness - he brought me toast to bed once and put lanolin on a welt of mine, and got three pillows so that I could be propped up to read. For a while I welcomed the fact that one day I would be old and dried, and no man would torment my heart.”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy & Epilogue [The Country Girls, The Lonely Girl, Girls in their married bliss].

“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. Roaming around all that time with a bunch of men, fishing; and Sermons on the Mount. Abandoning women.”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls: Three Novels and an Epilogue: (The Country Girl; The Lonely Girl; Girls in Their Married Bliss; Epilogue)

“Waiting for something to happen in the deathly, unhappy silence.”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy

“The convent was a gray stone building with hundreds of small square curtainless windows, like so many eyes spying out on the wet sinful town.”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy

“We have a gray stone house with stone slates on the roof and wooden beams inside, and whitewashed bumpety walls and pots for flowers everywhere; the boards creak and he loves me, and there is something about having a child and being in a valley, and being loved, that is more marvelous than anything you or I ever knew about in our flittery days.”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue

“It is the only time that I am thankful for being a woman, that time of evening when I draw the curtains, take off my old clothes, and prepare to go out. Minute by minute the excitement grows. I brush my hair under the light and the colors are autumn leaves in the sun. I shadow my eyelids with black stuff and am astonished by the look of mystery it gives to my eyes. I hate being a woman. Vain and shallow and superficial. Tell a woman that you love her and she’ll ask you to write it down so that she can show it to her friends. But I am happy at that time of night. I feel tender toward the world, I pet the wallpaper as if it were white rose petals flushed pink at the edges; I pick up my old, tired shoes and they are silver flowers that some man has laid outside my door. I kissed myself in the mirror and ran out of the room, happy and hurried and suitably mad.”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue

“suppose up to the time people die you think their lives will improve, or you’ll get on better with them, but once they’re dead you know neither thing is possible.”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls: Three Novels and an Epilogue: (The Country Girl; The Lonely Girl; Girls in Their Married Bliss; Epilogue)

“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 …”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls: Three Novels and an Epilogue: (The Country Girl; The Lonely Girl; Girls in Their Married Bliss; Epilogue)

“I don’t know what this great weight of hair is for. Our Lady would hardly approve it,” she said as she passed on to the next girl.”
― Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy