Irish short story writer & journalist (1917-1993)
We are real only in moments of kindness.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Long-Winded Lady
Next winter and next winter and next winter. In the mind they passed all slowly, like clouds across a summer sky, but a sudden call or turn of the head and they disappeared in a rush, shuttling quickly one after the last till nothing was left but a strangeness in the mind, a drop of thought that trembled and was gone, perhaps.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Visitor
New York City is not hospitable. She is very big and she has no heart. She is not charming. She is not sympathetic. She is rushed and noisy and unkempt, a hard, ambitious, irresolute place, not very lively, and never gay. When she glitters she is very, very bright, and when she does not glitter she is dirty.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Long-Winded Lady
Love isn't a straight line. It's a roller coaster ride.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin
You could say that an exile was a person who knew of a country that made all other countries seem strange.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Springs of Affection
The truth is a hard thing to bear, but it's always better than living a lie.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin
I find that a decision to do something leaves me free, while a decision not to do something only leaves me surrounded with undone things and endless, exasperating chances of changing my mind.
MAEVE BRENNAN
"Giving Money in the Street", The Long-Winded Lady
Home is a place in the mind. When it is empty, it frets. It is fretful with memory, faces and places and times gone by. Beloved images rise up in disobedience and make a mirror for emptiness.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Visitor
Now in the city there are two worlds. One world has walls around it and one world has people around it. The second world is outside, with the late-winter sky and the bare trees and the hard pavements that stretch in every direction, and with the bright shining shop windows and the chattering crowds. This world has a sightless malicious face, which is the face of the crowd. The face of the crowd is not immediately to be seen, it only becomes apparent after a while, when it shows itself in wondering side-long looks and sharp glances.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Visitor
In gloomy moments, I think we are allowed to stay alive here but not to live, much less to enjoy ourselves or take pleasure in what we see when we look out of our windows or walk around our streets. If we have the fortitude to get up out of bed in the morning and get going to face the day, we should also have the freedom to rejoice, and I think the freedom to rejoice is being denied us when our senses are dulled at every turn by streets that are inimical when they are not simply sad.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Long-Winded Lady
There's a thin line between love and hate, and it's easy to cross.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin
The past is never really gone. It's always with us, shaping who we are.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin
There are more parades in this city than any of us know about. There was one yesterday that went unwitnessed and unadmired except by two policemen and me, and it was a real parade, with marching men, all in line and all in step, and martial music.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Long-Winded Lady
Sometimes the most important things in life are the things we take for granted.
MAEVE BRENNAN
The Springs of Affection: Stories of Dublin