Edwin O'Connor > Quotes

“And while he spoke of my mother often and fondly to me, he always did so incompletely, in a strangely peripheral way, so that I grew up with a picture of her that was really little more than an outline. Was this unfair, an injustice to me? It must seem so, and I suppose in a way it was. And yet we all have within ourselves those private spaces that are uniquely our own and that we cannot share. This was my father's: the heart of his grief, which he chose not to expose. It was only now, in these last months before his death, that the outline was filled in, that without preliminary or explanation, my father suddenly began to talk of my mother as he had never talked before, in words and phrases lit with a bursting lyrical warmth and love that had been stored up and held within him all this time, and that was now released because, I think, he knew his own time was so short, and because he did not for a moment doubt that very soon now he would be joined to her again...

So there was a feeling of joy here.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Edge of Sadness

“There are, after all, certain social duties that a priest has toward his parishioners, and if that priest is as I was--energetic and gregarious, with an aptitude for such occasions--these duties and occasions have a way of multiplying. There's a great attraction to this: he's doing what he likes to do, and he can tell himself that it's all for the honor and glory of God. He believes this, quite sincerely, and he finds ample support for such belief: on all sides he's assured that he is doing the much-needed job of "waking up the parish." Which is not a hard thing for a young priest to hear; he may even see himself as stampeding souls to their salvation. What he may not see is that he stands in some danger of losing himself in the strangely engrossing business of simply "being busy"; gradually he may find that he is rather uncomfortable whenever he is not "being busy." And, gradually too, he may find fewer and fewer moments in which he can absent himself from activity, in which he can be alone, can be silent, can be still--in which he can reflect and pray. And since these are precisely the moments that are necessary for all of us, in which spiritually we grow, in which, so to speak, we maintain and enrich our connection with God, then the loss of such moments is grave and perilous. Particularly so for a priest--particularly for a priest who suddenly finds that he can talk more easily to a parish committee than he can to God. Something within him will have atrophied from disuse; something precious, something vital. It will have gone almost without his knowing it, but one day, in a great crisis, say, he will reach for it--and it will not be there. And then...then he may find that the distance between the poles is not so great a distance after all....”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Edge of Sadness

“I left out certain details, but while these were important to me, they would have been to no one else: they were those moments, those parts of life, which are so purely personal and private that you can no more share them than you can share your heart or brain: in all of us there is that small and unsurrenderable core that...well, that in the end determines everything.”
― Edwin O'Connor

“I've often thought that among all the afflicting sights of the world, none can be much more so than this one short walk along three city blocks, where night after night it's possible to see--indeed, it's impossible not to see--these faces from which hope and joy and dignity and light have been draining so steadily and for so long that now there is nothing left but this assortment of indifferent, damaged masks. They belong to human beings who, after a lifetime of struggling to become one thing or another, have succeeded only in becoming the rough sketches of their species, recognizable but empty, the bruised and wretched bodies and souls of the saddest people on earth: the people who no longer care.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Edge of Sadness

“So long as I’m here, I figure maybe the both of us could chew the fat a little, hey?” He’s ready to sell out, thought Gorman in surprise. He was not surprised by the duplicity—he had known Camaratta for many years—but by its speed.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“A bad guess, Camaratta,” he said. “You’re miles off.” One did not unnecessarily allow even token satisfaction to the enemy, and in any event, Gorman’s rule in such situations was short and simple: Tell them nothing.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“And of course that’s all nonsense what you’re saying, my dear man. All pure nonsense, nothing but hogwash. You could live to be a hundred and twenty-five and put new red, white and blue posters of yourself all around town every day, and still they wouldn’t think of you as often as they will of Frank Skeffington when he’s been dead fifty years. The difference is that they all loved him and nobody loves you. I say this in no criticism of you, my dear man. It’s not your fault that you are what you are. It’s all in the genes: you’re not responsible.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“That was a very grand speech, Governor,” Ditto said. “One of the very best I’ve ever heard you give on such an occasion.” Inspired by the eloquence he had so recently attended, he said feelingly, “And I’m sure that the very same man in question you spoke in favor of tonight must be looking down on us right now and feeling proud of himself!” “A sentiment like that does you credit, Ditto,” Skeffington said. “There are times when you’re a harbor of lovely thoughts. There’s only one thing wrong and that’s your sense of direction. I doubt very much that he’s looking down on us tonight; I have a feeling that from where the good Eddie is, it’s a hell of a long look up.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“Then he began to talk to them, stressing particularly the differences between them and himself: the differences in background, in political faith, in belief, and so on. And then, when he’d done this for several minutes, he announced that whatever their differences may have been, at least they were alike in one respect. ‘We are united, gentlemen, in what is, when you come to think of it, a very considerable accomplishment,’ he said. ‘We’ve all managed to stay out of jail!”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“He runs for office, mostly. Against me or against anybody; Charlie plays no favorites. He hasn’t been very successful lately, but back about twenty years ago, Charlie was considered quite a comer. He was always a great talker and he started off with a bang. He was on the City Council, a member of the Governor’s Council—not under me, I might add—and he even served a term in Congress. In those days Charlie seemed to be looking into a rosy tomorrow.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“Doesn’t it tire you, really? I’m exhausted, but you look as though you were good for a few hours more of the same thing.” Skeffington regarded him with amusement. “I have to,” he said simply. “In politics, only a young man can afford to look tired. He doesn’t have to prove he’s young enough for the job, you see.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“I could not believe in the joyous morning bound. It was disbelief well-founded: thirty-five years between then and now, and while I rise punctually I do so grudgingly; each morning brings its own renewal of the battle....”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Edge of Sadness

“I see. Exactly what will he do?” “What he’s told,” Skeffington said, with a rather frightening candor.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“In plotting the story of Little Simp, Adam had been from the beginning a traditionalist. Not for him the sudden, improbable leaps into the outrageous; Little Simp adhered to a conservative pattern, one long-established in the world of the comics: the twelve-year-old American child successfully pitted against the powers of international evil.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“I must say I admire faith of that kind. Although blind, it’s inspiring. It’s the kind of faith the followers of Jemima Wilkinson had, many years ago. Matter of fact, my young opponent reminds me in many ways of the good Jemima. As you probably remember, she was a Quaker lady who lived in this country back in the days of the Revolution. It was Jemima’s claim that she had died in 1776 and had come back to earth as a reincarnation of Our Lord. There were a few unkind people who were somewhat skeptical about this, but she managed to collect a substantial group of followers who had faith. One day she announced that she was about to give a demonstration of her divine powers: she was going to walk upon the waters. The faithful assembled on the banks; the good Jemima appeared, clad in a flowing robe of white. She put one foot out towards the river, then suddenly stopped and asked the people if they really had faith. They said they did. She asked them if they truly believed that she could walk on water. They said they did indeed. Well then, said Jemima, if that was the case there was no point in going through with it; any demonstration would be superfluous.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“It’s mostly a matter of practice. That, and of knowing what each group really wants. There’s a considerable difference between what they say they want, and what they’ll really settle for. You can promise them the first, but you only have to deliver the second.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“Why doesn’t the man put an altar in the room while he’s at it? And invite me in to bless it, preferably during one of his broadcasts?” “Possibly because he hasn’t thought of it,” suggested the Monsignor.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“and he had rarely so much as appeared on a public platform; but from a single dusty room in an old water-front building he had ruled his ward firmly, efficiently, and with an inflexible adherence to the rules of party discipline.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“They have the strength of the stranger,” Skeffington said. “They’ve never taken any pears because they’ve never been close to the pear tree.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“He may be for the underprivileged, but he wants to decide who they are and what they’re to have, himself. The old boss principle. Government by favor, pre-Roosevelt style.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“See you around,” he whispered. The whisper was barely audible, but Adam heard. Skeffington’s eyes seemed now to snap shut; his head turned back with a queer, abrupt jerk; his body stiffened; and one arm hung rigidly over the side of the bed, pointing to the floor. Frank Skeffington was dead.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“He was not a bad man, but he was worse: he was a self-made one.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“Your uncle was never really popular in the western part of the state—he belonged to the wrong party, for one thing, and then of course those people out there are absolutely depraved, far worse than anything in the South: all inbred, you know, from living together for centuries in those hills—so it was all most amusing and sometimes quite violent.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“A lifetime spent on the politely savage battleground of his profession had given him a high opinion of silence and self-control as tactical weapons.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“A delegation from the Colonial Men shows up, wearing blue flannel coats and ice-cream pants, slightly yellow with age. The pants, that is; the Colonial Men are rather nicely preserved.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“The dessert arrived: this too was predictable. It was a pudding: a gluey gelatinous mess that was apparently indigenous to this house; the managing editor had seen it nowhere else. “. . . Good, plain food,” Mr. Force was saying. He attacked the pudding voraciously. “Do you find this dessert enjoyable?” “Very enjoyable, Mr. Force.” “You’re quite right, it is enjoyable. It is a kind of tapioca pudding, but it is both less expensive and more filling than the regular tapioca. It is not only nourishing, it is faintly laxative as well. . . . I believe that Sidney Rogers has been committed to a mental hospital.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“And, if you will forgive just one more personal reflection, I myself think of him as he was just a few short days ago when I went to his home to hear his last confession and to give him the Blessed Sacrament, just before he died. And it seems to me, now, that to have lived a long life, to have left the lot of many of those around you a little bit better than it once was, to have been genuinely loved by a great many people, and to have died in God’s good grace, is no small thing to have happened to any man. Yet that is what happened to Frank Skeffington; I hope it may happen as well for all of us.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“CITY HALL was a lunatic pile of a building: a great, grim, resolutely ugly dust-catcher which had been designed eighty years before by the then mayor, one Clement “Nutsy” McGrath.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“And lots of them just don’t want to get mixed up with the mud. They feel that it’s just inviting trouble to get involved in a business that everyone seems to regard as being fairly shady.” “Another victory for Skeffington and his breed,” the Cardinal said savagely. “They can be thanked for this reputation. And the upshot of it all is . . . what?” He pointed to the television set. “That!” he said with disgust. “A McCluskey!”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

“It would be the pious thing to do, no doubt,” Gorman agreed. “But then if you both knew Knocko, you might damn well want to talk about almost anything else in a hurry. Out of respect for the dead, you might say.”
― Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah