It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the complex relationship between fear and intrigue, particularly regarding madness.
In this quote, Edna O'Brien describes a powerful encounter with madness, suggesting that it can evoke both fear and fascination. This duality indicates how humans often react to concepts that challenge their understanding of sanity, showing that fear can coexist with a deep curiosity that compels us to explore the unknown aspects of the human psyche.
In practice
During a speech on mental health, I referenced Edna O'Brien's reflection on madness to highlight both the fear and fascination that many have with mental illness.
Love . . . is like nature, but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight, and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls.
That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.
Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are walking by the seashore, footprint after footprint of trodden sand, and somehow the kiss or the spoken covenant gets lost in the vastness and indifference of nature. In a city there are places to remind us of what has been.
Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.
Oh, love, what an unreasoning creature it grew to be.
Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.
If God did not exist, He would have to be invented. But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.
Truth is the agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God.
What I'm concerned with is what I would call the missing history - the invisible imprint of our stay on Earth and in time.
All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States - and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!
Memory that yearns to join the centre, a limb remembering the body from which it has been severed, like those bamboo thighs of the god.
Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.
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