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Flann O'Brien

Flann O'Brien Books

Novelist

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“Characters should be interchangeable as between one book and another. The entire corpus of existing literature should be regarded as a limbo from which discerning authors could draw their characters as required, creating only when they failed to find a suitable existing puppet. The modern novel should be largely a work of reference. Most authors spend their time saying what has been said before – usually said much better. A wealth of references to existing works would acquaint the reader instantaneously with the nature of each character, would obviate tiresome explanations and would effectively preclude mountebanks, upstarts, thimble-riggers and persons of inferior education from an understanding of contemporary literature.”

CharacterLiterary Theory
Book:At Swim-two-birds
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“You mean that because I have no name I cannot die and that you cannot be held answerable for death even if you kill me?" "That is about the size of it," said the Sergeant. I felt so sad and so entirely disappointed that tears came into my eyes and a lump of incommunicable poignancy swelled tragically in my throat. I began to feel intensely every fragment of my equal humanity. The life that was bubbling at the end of my fingers was real and nearly painful in intensity and so was the beauty of my warm face and the loose humanity of my limbs and the racy health of my red rich blood. To leave it all without good reason and to smash the little empire into small fragments was a thing too pitiful even to refuse to think about.”

HumorHumourGallows Humour
Book:The Third Policeman
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“The gross and net result of it is that people who spend most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles.”

PeopleWould BeNaturalResultsNumbersHalfPersonalityIronAtomsRidingGrossBicycleParishNatural Life
Book:The Complete Novels
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“Could Henry Ford produce the Book of Kells? Certainly not. He would quarrel initially with the advisability of such a project and then prove it was impossible.”

BookImpossibleProduceProveProjectsQuarrelsProve It
Book:Myles away from Dublin: being a selection from the column written for The Nationalist and Leinster times, Carlow, under the name of George Knowall
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“After a time," said old Mathers disregarding me, "I mercifully perceived the errors of my ways and the unhappy destination I would reach unless I mended them. I retired from the world in order to try to comprehend it and to find out why it becomes more unsavoury as the years accumulate on a man's body. What do you think I discovered at the end of my meditations?" I felt pleased again. He was now questioning me. "What?" "That No is a better word than Yes," he replied.”

ThinkingMenWorldWayTryingYearsSaidEndsBodyOrderFeltMeditationErrorsUnhappyMy WayDestinationQuestioningRetired
Book:The Third Policeman (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
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“The continual cracking of your feet on the road makes a certain quantity of road come up into you. When a man dies they say he returns to clay but too much walking fills you up with clay far sooner (or buries bits of you along the road) and brings your death half-way to meet you. It is not easy to know what is the best way to move yourself from one place to another.”

KnowsMenWayMovingCertainDiesEasyBitsHalfToo MuchFeetReturnWalkingCome UpBest WayQuantityClayHalf Way
Book:The Complete Novels
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“Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One Beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.”

MindMayBookMatterEyeFacesThreeMinutesSubjectsExpressionActivityPerceptionMouthsHundredAgreeAssumingBreadOpeningSensualRelatedSufficientPrivacySparesRetiredGood BookOf My MindChewingVacantSpare Time
Book:At Swim-two-birds
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“Do you know what I am going to tell you, he said with his wry mouth, a pint of plain is your only man. Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatisfactory relation to its toxic content and I subsequently became addicted to brown stout in bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite the painful and blinding fits of vomiting which a plurality of bottles has often induced in me.”

KnowsMenSaidStillsFoundBearsFitDrinkMassMouthsRelationRemainsPainfulDespiteBrownDo You KnowBottlesToxicEulogyPintsStoutWryVomitingWithstanding
Author:Flann O'Brien
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“When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put it to sleep, that is a better way. Let it serve only to turn the sleeping soul over, to change the blood-stream and thus make possible a deeper and more refined sleep.”

MenWaySoulBodyTurnsLostSleepExistenceBloodCenturyIllusionOvercomingSeekingDeeperAwakeStreamsRestlessAwakenedBetter WaysRefined
Author:Flann O'Brien
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“Why be a dumb dud? Do your friends shun you? Do people cross the street when they see you approaching? Do they run up the steps of strange houses, pretend they live there and force their way into the hall while you are passing by? If this is the sort of person you are, you must avail yourself today of this new service. Otherwise, you might as well be dead.”

PeopleIfsWayWellsPersonsMightRunningTodayHouseForceStepsStreetsStrangeCrossesPassingPassingsDumbHallsPassing By
Author:Flann O'Brien
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