Michael D. O'Brien > Quotes

“Solitude is the natural dwelling place of truth…It is there you will wrestle. It is there you will be tested by fire and by darkness. ”
― Michael D. O'Brien

“...life without coffee is not really life.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Island of the World

“Life without coffee is not really life.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Island of the World

“[About the main character approaching death in old age, observed by her husband . . .] He saw that she had already laid down a large portion of her life long ago. Piece by piece she had given it away as she wrestled with existence, as her self was absorbed as nourishment into his life and the life of the children and the community. And laid down most piercingly, as she abandoned, one by one, the shapes of the dreams she had planned. Only to take them up again in other forms.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Man projects his wounds upon the world, my friend. He judges everything, and in the judging he reveals himself.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Father Elijah: An Apocalypse

“In this world are many people who do not master their bodies. Such people say that no one can tell them what to do, not even God, and they think that in this way they have no master. In the end they become slaves to anything.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Island of the World

“A rare objectivity and insight can be imparted regarding this world's struggle for spiritual integrity. In the land of Faerie, the reader may see his small battles writ large in the wars of titans or elves and understand for the first time, his own worth.”
― Michael D. O'Brien

“The only indestructible palace is in the heart.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“The pain in itself is not joy. It is simply pain. But the meaning of the pain, that is joy.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Father Elijah: An Apocalypse

“Real love is a long apprenticeship.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“You can't just sit there hating the wound, Tan, or indulging in bitterness. Whatever you become in life, always ask yourself, am I making more life or am I making more death?”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Strangers and Sojourners

“Love is the soul of the world, though its body bleeds, and we must learn to bleed with it. Love is also the seed and milk and the fruit of the world, though we can partake of it in greed or reverence. We are born, we eat, and learn, and die. We leave a tracery of messages in the lives of others, a little shifting of the soil, a stone moved from here to there, a word uttered, a song, a poem left behind. I was here, each of these declare. I was here.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Island of the World

“We must all make the mental leap from the pious histories we have read in the martyrologies to the reality of living flesh and blood. Our early martyrs were real men and women, with their own personalities, their flaws and their greatness. We are no different.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Father Elijah: An Apocalypse

“If we do not play in the dangerous surf, we will drown in puddles.”
― Michael D. O'Brien

“No true love is possible, Lewis demonstrates, until we abandon our claims, our rights, our grievances. Until then we will be trapped in the obscurity of our heart's mixed motives, our will to possess, to control, to be our own gods.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, A Landscape with Dragons: The Battle for Your Child's Mind

“Happy Christmas" was their version of "Merry Christmas," and a better version, it seemed to him, for making merry was different from making happiness.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, The Father's Tale

“Do not hate them. They do not know they are evil. They are blind. If you hate them, if you kill them in your heart, they will not die. They will rise up again and again within you, and they will kill your heart.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Voyage to Alpha Centauri

“Así se prueba a un hombre. Si es honesto, intelectualmente hablando, reexamina sus opiniones y comienza de nuevo.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, El padre Elías (un apocalipsis)

“Automobiles are unreliable and dangerous slaves. They frequently revolt and kill their masters. I hate them.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Island of the World

“Old G.K. knew when to fast and when to down a good ale. It's the timing. It's all in the timing. [On G.K. Chesterton]”
― Michael D. O'Brien

“We came to know that love is the soul of the world, though its body bleeds, and we must learn to bleed with it.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Island of the World

“The mountains are intimations of transcendence, which he is now free to pursue, and the walking writes messages in every cell of his body, telling him that he is not locked inside a cement box, nor in a water drum, but is moving forward.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Island of the World

“It is about a dragon and a prince and a princess.” “Oh, lovely! Does it end happily?” “Happily for the humans. Not so well for the dragon.” “Just as it should be. Commence.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Father Elijah: An Apocalypse

“Human relationships were so complicated and always veering in the direction of the irrational.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, The Father's Tale

“Men are accustomed to making objective assessments of devastating situations, as long as they are not immersed in them. Rare is he who maintains objectivity in the midst of personal affliction.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, The Fool of New York City: A Novel

“un hombre que ama puede ver cosas que los demás no ven. La fe abre puertas.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, El padre Elías (un apocalipsis)

“Yet he saw that in all places there was originality, resulting from the human efforts at decoration and ingenious methods of survival.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, The Father's Tale

“Words are gold, split and shared as coinage, small pebbles, emblems offered back and forth-given, received; given, received-expanding the vocabulary of the soul.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Island of the World

“The poet who sees himself as a hero or a prophet, or a priest of the socio-political forces to which he is loyal, which he believes are the historical necessities of his times, too easily becomes a puppet. He has no external measure with which to assess reality. Whether he submits to the forces or rejects them, he becomes a parody of himself, and then without knowing it submits his gifts to the demons of his era. He loses his place in the continuity of time. He becomes dependent on social affirmation and the drug of exalted feelings common to all revolutionaries. He destroys, even as he thinks he creates.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Island of the World

“Children need to see that they are part of a history and that the story of their family is a living thing. God tells it, a new story in each generation, and each must hold hands across the sea of time, joining together the ones who went before and the ones who come after. It is given from above. Little do we understand this in the beginning, but time teaches us many things we did not expect to learn. That is life. It is the same everywhere.”
― Michael D. O'Brien, Theophilos