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

If we do not play in the dangerous surf, we will drown in puddles.

— Michael D. O'Brien

“The only indestructible palace is in the heart.”

— Michael D. O'Brien

“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

“[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

Man projects his wounds upon the world, my friend. He judges everything, and in the judging he reveals himself.

— Michael D. O'Brien

“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

“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

“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

Automobiles are unreliable and dangerous slaves. They frequently revolt and kill their masters. I hate them.

— Michael D. O'Brien

“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

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

Real love is a long apprenticeship.

— Michael D. O'Brien

[T]he reason why Shakespeare and Pushkin were great writers was because from the time when they were boys they stood like policemen over their thoughts and didn't allow one small insincerity to creep in.

— Michael D. O'Brien

“Human relationships were so complicated and always veering in the direction of the irrational.”

— Michael D. O'Brien

“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 pain in itself is not joy. It is simply pain. But the meaning of the pain, that is joy.

— Michael D. O'Brien

Tell me, Anna, if man is capable of projecting his belief onto the cosmos, isn't it possible by the same token, that he can project his unbelief onto the cosmos?

— 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

“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

“The world is full of hatred because it refuses to be poor. It wants to conquer fear with power. But you will conquer in another way, the unknown way. First, perhaps, you will forget. You will not see. You will not understand. Later you may see, and then you will know that the false self must die in order for the true self to be born.”

— Michael D. O'Brien

“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

“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 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

“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

“Abstract academic discussions have a way of leaving their mark on entire civilizations, as the events of this century have proved all too well.”

— Michael D. O'Brien

“Theophilos, the light of reason that we both reverence is not a god. Neither does the highest development of the human mind confer divinity upon us. We may quote Aristotle one moment and in the next find ourselves betraying our wives and children-for the sake of passion, in the name of love-and not know how we arrived at that lamentable state. Reason is a gift of God but of itself cannot ennoble a man.”

— Michael D. O'Brien

He's amazing. He's a different kind of saint, maybe a tougher kind than the Pope.

— Michael D. O'Brien

“The Vettore connection.”

— Michael D. O'Brien

“For those who suffer disposal, the cost is their very lives. For those of us who survive, there is a creeping indifference to anything other than one's own survival, which results in increased selfishness, hardness of heart, denial-which in the long range will bring about the devaluation of self. To counter this devaluation, therefore, one flees into pride of accomplishment. Isn't what we do the defining measure of selfhood in our society?”

— Michael D. O'Brien

“When his wife died, for a while it was the end of the world, because part of him had died with her. As the long, slow recovery proceeded, he had gratefully and guiltily accepted the return of equilibrium. But he had not paid attention to a parallel phenomenon: his reversion to what he had been before his marriage. Though changed by whatever he had learned during their years together, and by whatever healing had taken place, he had fallen back into the old patterns of withdrawal. Nursing the dreadful wound of her absence, he had failed to notice the subtler void opening up within himself.”

— Michael D. O'Brien