Why, isabel? Why are you doing this to yourself? To your body?'And why are you doing this to me? is the awful, selfish thought that is left unsaid. 'Because I can,' she answers, and I shiver as she unconsciously echoes chastity-ruth. 'But-' 'Because it's my body,' she cuts in. 'Isn't it?
Louise O'Neill
Related You should read something else." Why would he have done that to him?" I don't know," she s... NICHOLAS SPARKS It's going to be okay," Park said. She nodded. "Right." "Because I love you."<... RAINBOW ROWELL Jenny, if you're so convinced I'm a loser, why did you bulldoze me into buying you coffee?'<... ERICH SEGAL Jace,” she said. “Why are you doing this to me?” “Because you’re lying to me. A... CASSANDRA CLARE Why are you touching me?" "Because I can . TAHEREH MAFI What are you doing?" she whispered. He wasn't sure why she was whispering, but he kept his voi... SAVANNAH STUART I pity the woman who will love you when I am done. She will show up to your first date wit... CLEMENTINE VON RADICS I thought you told me you loved stories Have you ever heard a story of an adventurer with a sane pla... SABAA TAHIR I am five, I will never understand why we are stranded in our selves but in this moment I ... SHARON DOUBIAGO Mom." I couldn't believe she was doing this again. She was taking this moment, this time when I was ... SARAH DESSEN The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this... ALICE WALKER I hit my chest with my fist, accusing my body of failing. I’ve had eighty years to adjust and ... KIERA CASS I say to my sister, "I thought you were doing the things in our Dream Book. I was sure of it." CLARA KENSIE Why is my love for you, dyed in wool? What is the hindrance to moving on? Why in lov... ZUBAIR AHSAN She is catalyst. She is chaos. I can see why he loves her. AMIE KAUFMAN That's not the same. What happened to you, to your species, it's... it doesn't even compare.' '... BECKY CHAMBERS Tell me why you don't do it?? "I can't..." what you can't "... It's too far"... why?? DEYTH BANGER Just Me, Just Me Sweet Marie, she loves just me (She also loves Maurice McGhee). SHEL SILVERSTEIN Are you following me?" she asks, but doesn't meet my gaze. "Yeah," I say. "Why?" I gi... SIMONE ELKELES You have no idea of what you are doing to me,” he warned. She smiled. “Are you trying to fr... AMANDA QUICK Why are you crying?" "Because," she whispered, her voice shaking, "you remind me of what the wo... SARAH J. MAAS What are you doing?" she asked. Grimacing, he considered returning his mouth to hers and ... LORRAINE HEATH It's all right, Tessa, you can go. We love you. You can go now.' 'Why are you saying that?' JENNY DOWNHAM Wanderer: You don't really feel that way about me you know. It's this body... she's pretty isn't she... STEPHENIE MEYER She is the force, that you end up reading about in thick novels. She is the kind of woman... JASLEEN KAUR GUMBER Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for e... PABLO NERUDA Forget the girl who had everything. She died when her father did." "But I--" "Nothing is w... JAY KRISTOFF Aren't you frightened?" Somehow I expected her to say no, to say something wise like a grownup... NICHOLAS SPARKS With a silent order, I urged Snout forward—but he veered away, charging toward Hazel instead. N... JOEL N. ROSS But… all I said was that I was scared." After what you got to experience? That's smart... JIM BUTCHER 6 months, 2 weeks, 4 days, and I still don’t know which month it was then or what day it... CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON She: Why was there a distance between you and me? He: Distance makes us realize how much we mis... AVIJEET DAS Damn, damn, damn," she said. "I never said why I like you, and now I have to go." "That's okay,... RAINBOW ROWELL I guess that’s how well you know me. You think I like hearing this news.” “I’m sorry. T... JULIA GLASS So what's your doll's name?" Boo asked me. "Barbie," I said. "All their names are Barbie." SARAH DESSEN What do you do?' she asks, holding out the vest. 'What do you do?' 'What do you do?' she a... BRET EASTON ELLIS You should be wearing green," she said. "To match your eyes." "In case you never noticed,... GENA SHOWALTER She threw up her hands. "All right. Why not?" Why not?" Sure." H... SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS You rescued me when I thought nobody would. When I thought I wasn't worth the effort. You gave me ev... CHARLES MARTIN Will you call me before Christmas?' she asks. Maybe.' I pull on my vest, wondering why I even c... BRET EASTON ELLIS A bird who hurt her wing, now forgotten how to fly. A song she used to sing, bu... LANG LEAV You are real," she said to herself. "Aye." His voice was deep and resonant, a caress in h... J.R. WARD I don't get it,' Caroline said, bemused. 'She's the only one with wings. Why is that?' There we... SARAH DESSEN The captain put his fingers to his temples as if he had a headache. “So, let me get this straight.... RICHELLE E. GOODRICH There was something wrong with me. The human body doesn’t want to get hurt. We’re pro... MAGGIE STIEFVATER In the east," she says after a time, her gaze still downcast, "there is a tradition known as kint... MACKENZI LEE You're cute when you're worried," she muttered. "Your eyebrows get all scrunched together." "Y... RICK RIORDAN It's going to be okay. Right. Because I love you. Is that why? It is, actually. RAINBOW ROWELL She was in love with you,” he says. “And I don’t think she got to tell you, did she?” <... TESS SHARPE You're cute when you're worried," she muttered. "Your eyebrows get all scrunched together." RICK RIORDAN What the hell is that?" I laughed. "It's my fox hat." "Your fox hat?" "Yeah, Pudge. M... JOHN GREEN Why would she want to come back here and live?' I wondered. 'Doesn't seem like she'd want to.' ... TAWNI O'DELL There's a reason why she left them, Lauren," he says. His voice is deep, and it rumbles. "What's you... VERONICA ROTH She holds herself with such reserve. She smiles, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes, even in the c... LAUREN MYRACLE I should go," I said thickly. "Let me know when you want to start practice again. And thanks for...t... RICHELLE MEAD Faris turned on him. "Why choose to wear black today, of all days? I know why I'm in black. Why are ... CAROLINE STEVERMER Basch: So why don't you ask her out? The Runt: I'm scared she wouldn't like me and say no... SAMUEL SHEM Why do you do up your hair in those tortured plaits, now, Melanie? Why? Because, she said. ANGELA CARTER Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example,'The night is shattered an... PABLO NERUDA Why do you want to be on The Real World? -Because I want everyone to witness my youth DAVE EGGERS - Why me? - That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that mat... KURT VONNEGUT I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: "The night is full of ... PABLO NERUDA Can she be divorced?" I asked. "And famous for her commercials and ideas?" She can be anyt... SARAH DESSEN Rose? Is that you?" I peered behind him. Lissa. "What are you doing here?" "What are you doing ... RICHELLE MEAD Oh, God, Francesca,Now there’s a good one.Why?Why? Why?” He gave each one a different tenor, as ... JULIA QUINN O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that th... WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE I love you, Eliza,” I said. She thought about it. “No,” she said at last, “I don’t li... KURT VONNEGUT O woman, father says natural is beautiful so why do you redden your cheeks and blac... KAMAND KOJOURI Then why don't I tell on him? If they don't, why don't I? Because.... THALIA CHALTAS i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and n... E.E. CUMMINGS Why?” she whispered. “Why should I dance with you?” “Because I love you. Because ... ERIN MCCARTHY Without realizing what she was doing and more on an impulse than anything else, she leaned forward a... ROBERT FANNEY Ow. Stop that. It hurts my brain. Isn't your brain distributed through your entire body?<... HOWARD TAYLER Why this candle? Why this cake? The day of my birth is not today. I was born KAMAND KOJOURI When Kai fell silent, she risked a glance at him. He was staring at her hands [which she always hold... MARISSA MEYER I am no king, and I am no lord, And I am no soldier at-arms," said he. "I'm none but a har... PETER S. BEAGLE The season was waning fast Our nights were growing cold at last I took her to bed with sil... ROMAN PAYNE I don’t have a philosophy: I have senses... If I talk about Nature, it’s not because I know... ALBERTO CAEIRO The reasons you are kept in this body is because God want to kill your way of thinking . Before the ... WOALLY MANDZANGA Zach finally acknowledges me when my elbow smacks against his side as I shove my way between him and... KATIE MCGARRY What you are is a fucking tragedy, Simon Snow. You literally couldn't be a bigger mess." He tri... RAINBOW ROWELL I can sense your love, why leave me in darkness? Beguile me for your amusement, steal... KAMAND KOJOURI Sick of body, unable to rise up, vehemently intoxicated without wine . . . And it is as t... AL-MUTANABBī Why did Mother ask you to help me rescue Gelsi?" I asked Leif. "She thought I could assist you ... MARIA V. SNYDER So why aren’t you living with your sister?” “She wanted to meet new people,” Cath... RAINBOW ROWELL I’ve been telling you that you should hire Warren.” “Nat, I’m not going to hire W... JOSH LANYON She raised an eyebrow. "You got something to say to me, Seaweed Brain?" You'd probably ki... RICK RIORDAN Perry was leaning into my mother as he listened to what she said. They talked so close. He only lean... MARGARET MCMULLAN I have lived in the shadow of loss—the kind of loss that can paralyze you forever. I have gri... CHRISTINA RASMUSSEN In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.' Was s... JEANETTE WINTERSON Put your arms around my neck, sweetheart." "Whatever for?" He grasped her wrists and lifte... CATHERINE ANDERSON In fact she herself once blamed me Kyprogeneia because I prayed this word: SAPPHO Ye cannae leave.” “Why?” she yelled, glancing over her shoulder at Cormac. “Tell me wh... MARY MORGAN People are not an interruption of our business. People are our business. A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes. It is hard to look up to a leader who keeps his ear to the ground. The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed. The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in men. Ordinary people see no diff... The intelligence is proved not by ease of learning, but by understanding what we learn. Communication is something so simple and difficult that we can never put it in simple words.
More Louise O'Neill
They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest. LOUISE O'NEILL My body is not my own any more. They have stamped their names all over it. LOUISE O'NEILL I am not falling apart. I am being ripped at the seams, my insides torn out until I am hollow. LOUISE O'NEILL People give you a hard time about being a kid at twelve. They didn't want to give you Halloween cand... HEATHER O'NEILL You cannot borrow half of who you are from someone else, yet people try to do it all of the time, th... JENNIFER O'NEILL It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or ... EUGENE O'NEILL I am so far from being a pessimist...on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at... EUGENE O'NEILL The rocking of the boat by the waves was soothing but unknown. The men on the shore were asleep. Not... JOSEPH O'NEILL What the hell is that?" he asked. "Magic mushrooms." "I've always wanted to try those," he... HEATHER O'NEILL The Universe and Spirit do not understand limitations...PEOPLE invented limitations! JENNIFER O'NEILL You would not want to be responsible for someone else’s happiness, so please do not hold someone e... JENNIFER O'NEILL The yellow commuter train ran through canal-crossed fields as dull as graph paper. Always one saw ev... JOSEPH O'NEILL —Help these boys build a nation their own. Ransack the histories for clues to their past. Plunder ... JAMIE O'NEILL The word "Yankee" itself, I was informed, came from that simplest of Dutch names - Jan. JOSEPH O'NEILL Stay passed out, that's the right dope. There ain't any cool willow trees- except you grow your own ... EUGENE O'NEILL When I thought about my old friends Linus Lucas and Theo, I realized they were not really criminals ... HEATHER O'NEILL Thinking is contagious … so choose whom you surround yourself with carefully! Or at least ta... JENNIFER O'NEILL The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never kn... EUGENE O'NEILL Torkie Macleod has always regarded himself as a realist. He doesn’t believe in life after death or... ANTHONY O'NEILL Blaming is so much easier than taking responsibility, because if you take responsibility … then yo... JENNIFER O'NEILL Unhappiness can be like a virus spreading from one person, to the next person, to the next one and s... JENNIFER O'NEILL When working with the Universal Laws you are working with the laws of manifestation, not instant gra... JENNIFER O'NEILL There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now. EUGENE O'NEILL LARRY--(with increasing bitter intensity, more as if he were fighting with himself than with Hickey)... EUGENE O'NEILL The Mad Scene. Enter Ophelia! EUGENE O'NEILL Suddenly I realized that I wanted everything to be as it was when I was younger. When you're young e... HEATHER O'NEILL Happy roads is bunk. Weary roads is right. Get you nowhere fast. That's where I've got—nowhere. Wh... EUGENE O'NEILL From the way that people have always talked about your heart being broken, it sort of seemed to be a... HEATHER O'NEILL I felt shame - I see this clearly, now - at the instinctive recognition in myself of an awful enfeeb... JOSEPH O'NEILL Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it. HEATHER O'NEILL He thinks money spent on a home is money wasted. He's lived too much in hotels. Never the best hotel... EUGENE O'NEILL When you're a kid, if you watch 'The Jeffersons' with your family at seven o'clock, it seems like a ... HEATHER O'NEILL Now look here, Smithers. They's two kind's of stealing. They's the small kind, like what you does, a... EUGENE O'NEILL [I]ndividual readers may conceivably choose (or be led) to regard a given text as literary in cases ... PATRICK O'NEILL As a consumer an individual expresses “personal or self-regarding wants and interests”; as a cit... JOHN O'NEILL When men make gods, there is no God! EUGENE O'NEILL I love every bone in their heads. EUGENE O'NEILL Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors. EUGENE O'NEILL Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue. EUGENE O'NEILL Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors. EUGENE O'NEILL When you're 50 you start thinking about things you haven't thought about before. I used to t... EUGENE O'NEILL None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once t... EUGENE O'NEILL Cal opened another cabinet and removed a bottle of anti-inflammatory tablets, placing them on the ta... LISA CLARK O'NEILL I am one and when I am one I am none, and when I am none I have won. JULIEANNE O'CONNOR There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive a... FLANNERY O'CONNOR I suppose we all have our little hiding-hole if the truth was known, but as small as it is, the whol... FRANK O'CONNOR They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy... TIM O'BRIEN We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers... ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I ... GEORGIA O'KEEFFE Virtue should always be colmingled with humor. PATRICK O'BRIAN One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silenc... JOHN O'DONOHUE In yourself right now is all the place you've got. FLANNERY O'CONNOR [H]iding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn't make you nice, it just makes ... JENNY O'CONNELL Laughter is wine for the soul - laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness - t... SEáN O'CASEY The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. FLANNERY O'CONNOR If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church t... FLANNERY O'CONNOR I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Chris... FLANNERY O'CONNOR We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams. ARTHUR O'SHAUGHNESSY You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You... STEWART O'NAN All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. SEáN O'CASEY Gabrielle chuckled, her dark eyes twinkling. “So he’s been after you, has he? Poor Etta, pursued... MICHELLE O'LEARY She paused and saw him tense in expectation. He wouldn’t like to hear this, but better from her th... MICHELLE O'LEARY I’m not bipolar, I’ve just had a bipolar life foisted upon me. DANIEL O'MALLEY That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the tr... TIM O'BRIEN Accepting oneself does not preclude an attempt to become better. FLANNERY O'CONNOR Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and ... JOHN O'DONOHUE I found him perhaps the least terrifying man I've ever met in the theater—because at first glance ... PETER O'TOOLE Happiness arises from getting what you want, and this comes and goes. Joy arises from being with wha... MARY O'MALLEY It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice but the things you say. It's not th... IAN O'SHEA You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. Y... STEWART O'NAN They should." "Should be like a wood bee," she said. It was a private joke, a ... STEWART O'NAN The happiest she'd ever been was with him, and the saddest. Was that the true test of love? STEWART O'NAN Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't s... FLANNERY O'CONNOR Mrs. Hopewell had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people's in such a const... FLANNERY O'CONNOR You never loved me, Farin. You never even said you liked me very much. HEATHER O'BRIEN Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes. P.J. O'ROURKE Don't stand unmoving outside the door of a crying baby whose only desire is to touch you. Go to your... PEGGY O'MARA Marry for love. But also choose to marry a man or woman who you love that treats you with the ultima... JULIEANNE O'CONNOR There will be a time when love is beautiful and passionate and nothing else will exist but you and t... JULIEANNE O'CONNOR Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are ... FLANNERY O'CONNOR Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed w... JOHN O'DONOHUE [I suspect] that in the drive toward the liberal universalist notion of human rights that characteri... DARREN O'DONNELL All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul. You are here to realize and hon... JOHN O'DONOHUE If you are different from the rest of the flock, they bite you VINCENT O'SULLIVAN I guess we're really brothers, aren't we? Don't know what that means, except it means that some of t... TIM O'BRIEN We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where ... JOHN O'DONOHUE To love without ownership, to love with total trust and faith in that very love, to love with the sa... JULIEANNE O'CONNOR My feeling on the subject of sex with a man is - don't give it up unless you're willing to give him ... JULIEANNE O'CONNOR Life is surreal. When you step back and really take a look at it, the irony is absolute. JULIEANNE O'CONNOR Ladies, you have a ton of power if you just understand the fundamental differences between men and w... JULIEANNE O'CONNOR When it was dark, you always carried the sun in your hand for me. SEáN O'CASEY Well, I'm not sure where this puts me, Sire. I mean, at least with the others I know what's expected... AMIE O'BRIEN For Equilibrium, a Blessing: Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore, May the relief ... JOHN O'DONOHUE Sometimes, when people speak, I cease listening to their words and zoom in instead on the cadence, a... ROSIE O'DONNELL Moderation, we find, is an extremely difficult thing to get in this country. FLANN O'BRIEN In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things. EDNA O'BRIEN It could be a meeting on the street, or a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, ... JOHN O'DONOHUE The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of sh... JOHN O'DONOHUE Your noble friend will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your ... JOHN O'DONOHUE The ego is the false self-born out of fear and defensiveness. JOHN O'DONOHUE If you try to view yourself through the lenses that others offer you, all you will see are distortio... JOHN O'DONOHUE Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are ... JOHN O'DONOHUE We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us. JOHN O'DONOHUE Beauty is the illumination of your soul. JOHN O'DONOHUE Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship i... JOHN O'DONOHUE When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you.... JOHN O'DONOHUE No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entr... JOHN O'DONOHUE Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the ... JOHN O'DONOHUE Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore... JOHN O'DONOHUE If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it w... JOHN O'DONOHUE Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of... JOHN O'DONOHUE All you can ever achieve is a sense of your soul. You gain little glimpses of its light, colors, and... JOHN O'DONOHUE You are as young as you feel. If you begin to feel the warmth of your soul, there will be a youthful... JOHN O'DONOHUE Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits. JOHN O'DONOHUE You are like nobody since I love you" -Pablo Neruda This art of love discloses the ... JOHN O'DONOHUE Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuri... JOHN O'DONOHUE If you try to avoid or remove the awkward quality, it will pursue you. The only effective way to sti... JOHN O'DONOHUE The heart is the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautifu... JOHN O'DONOHUE It is lovely to meet an old person whose face is deeply lined, a face that has been deeply inhabited... JOHN O'DONOHUE Inspiration is always a surprising visitor. JOHN O'DONOHUE you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care... TIM O'BRIEN It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and dange... TIM O'BRIEN ...his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe... TIM O'BRIEN But this too is true: stories can save us. TIM O'BRIEN They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of th... TIM O'BRIEN The wait is long, my dream of you does not end. NUALA O'FAOLAIN There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrib... JOHN O'DONOHUE I’d begun to think of the Immortality Bus as the Entropy Bus, and of ourselves as trundling across... MARK O'CONNELL It's not enough to be nice in life. You've got to have nerve. GEORGIA O'KEEFFE Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore... EDNA O'BRIEN I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it. FLANNERY O'CONNOR You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to t... P.J. O'ROURKE And although in many cases these unions proved happy enough, sailors being excellent husbands, often... PATRICK O'BRIAN Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless ... FLANNERY O'CONNOR I write to discover what I know. FLANNERY O'CONNOR Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I s... FLANNERY O'CONNOR The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling; a beauty different from t... JOHN O'DONOHUE Then Dad started going on about the complex geological formations in this part of the coast until Mu... KERRIE O'CONNOR Having a Coke with You is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biar... FRANK O'HARA Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.... FLANNERY O'CONNOR She had a vision of the two of them trapped on a tiny raft surrounded by miles of open water. It wou... STEWART O'NAN I would not hurt you, little man,' he said. 'I think that I got the disorder in Mullingar... FLANN O'BRIEN Fame stole my yellow. Yellow is the color you get when you're real and brutally honest. Yellow is wi... ROSIE O'DONNELL Grace changes us and change is painful". FLANNERY O'CONNOR The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a ... FLANNERY O'CONNOR There's a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is t... FLANNERY O'CONNOR Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an arti... FLANNERY O'CONNOR She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity. FLANNERY O'CONNOR She would've been a good woman," said The Misfit, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every ... FLANNERY O'CONNOR I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love. FRANK O'HARA Stand up, be counted. We have the numbers. BILL O'REILLY Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those ... FLANNERY O'CONNOR People spot a big black lens, and they worry about what they're doing, or how their hair looks. Nobo... ERICA O'ROURKE I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite... GEORGIA O'KEEFFE The sins of the Midwest: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of the familiar. Where is the r... STEWART O'NAN The city was a puzzle box built of symbols, a confusion of old and new, armored cars and donkeys in ... STEWART O'NAN That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers w... FLANNERY O'CONNOR She hated her job the same way I hated my jobs because she knew she was worth more, but she also hat... TAWNI O'DELL Romance and romantic are different. Death, itself, can be romantic. Nature and a destructive snowsto... R.B. O'BRIEN The robot successfully dismounted the car, proceeding at a slight crouch, and with exaggerated cauti... MARK O'CONNELL To create one's world in any of the arts takes courage. GEORGIA O'KEEFFE Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the i... GEORGIA O'KEEFFE I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way... things I had n... GEORGIA O'KEEFFE I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a si... GEORGIA O'KEEFFE Don’t tell me my writing is misogynistic or anti-feminist just because I or my heroines like to be... R.B. O'BRIEN That's the trouble with you preachers," he said. "You've all got too good to believe in anything," a... FLANNERY O'CONNOR When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war, You co... TIM O'BRIEN When you steal a people's language, you leave their soul bewildered. JOHN O'DONOHUE Words, too, have genuine substance -- mass and weight and specific gravity. TIM O'BRIEN Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When ... MEGHAN O'ROURKE There was a lot about Kim and J.P. he didn't get.... he was confused by their lack of romance. As a ... STEWART O'NAN We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate those ... TIM O'BRIEN It's sad when you learn you're not much of a hero. TIM O'BRIEN Experience has taught me that what you love, you should love all the harder because someday it will ... RONAN O'BRIEN A hat should be taken off when greeting a lady, and left off the rest of your life. Nothing looks mo... P.J. O'ROURKE Rising up into the air, they took to the sky and flew. From west and beyond west, into the wind and ... PAT O'SHEA You're the fire burning inside of me. KELVIN O'RALPH I will not be a common man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony. I do not crave security. I wis... PETER O'TOOLE I guess relationships are just funny like that. It's impossible to figure out why some work out and ... JENNY O'CONNELL If you work really hard, and you're kind, amazing things will happen. CONAN O'BRIEN Lasting healing comes from being curious rather than controlling, from mercy rather than manipulatio... MARY O'MALLEY I've always been a pretty good researcher," said Bronwyn modestly.Oh, so that we sha... DANIEL O'MALLEY The plates of the continental shelf - the world itself - had shifted, and their first concern was pu... STEWART O'NAN The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When ... P.J. O'ROURKE Not only have we not done the good things that God really wants us to do, but in fact, we’ve done ... ERIN O'RIORDAN Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his... FLANNERY O'CONNOR You have to quit confusing a madness with a mission. FLANNERY O'CONNOR By subsidiarity is meant the principle that responsibilities should be devolved to the lowest viable... DENIS O'BRIEN For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the fles... FLANNERY O'CONNOR The truth is not distorted here, but rather a distortion is used to get at truth. FLANNERY O'CONNOR There are some of us who have to pay for our faith every step of the way and who have to work out dr... FLANNERY O'CONNOR We lost our innocence in the Fall, and our turn to it is through the Redemption which was brought ab... FLANNERY O'CONNOR Satisfy your demand for reason but always remember that charity is beyond reason, and God can be kno... FLANNERY O'CONNOR Faith is what someone knows to be true, whether they believe it or not. FLANNERY O'CONNOR Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them. P.J. O'ROURKE I have been told by the third grade teacher that my daughter Poppet is reading at middle school leve... P.J. O'ROURKE My father...was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings. FLANN O'BRIEN When all else fails, there's always delusion. CONAN O'BRIEN I was always the girl growing up who just wasn’t quite like the rest of them. I liked working hard... R.B. O'BRIEN You don't know. When I'm out there at night I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving,... TIM O'BRIEN