Orna Ross Quotes & Sayings

We who have seen the truth will reshape the world, and Ireland shall be our entrance to this world beyond words. — Orna Ross

One good thing about it is how it wises you up early to what most men want from a woman. — Orna Ross

The body has been used as a form of social control through the ages and how a mature economy can only achieve growth by making us feel abject, hungry and isolated from ourselves and each other. Making us hate ourselves from the inside out ensures we will overspend, over-consume and over-indulge ... — Orna Ross

I need more. Thinking he meant water, I reached for the jug. — Orna Ross

You know, Mercy, it is really very simple." He took my hand. "He has no power, hon. Not unless you hand yours over. — Orna Ross

How could I not stand myself? Was I one person or two? — Orna Ross

MERCY KILLING??? — Orna Ross

It takes a village to raise a child, they say, and it takes a community to raise a genius, no matter how singular the individual. — Orna Ross

Never be a good prisoner. Not unless you want to collude in your own imprisonment. — Orna Ross

You make such beautiful poetry out of what you call your love and your unhappiness. Marriage would be such a dull affair in comparison. — Orna Ross

Imagination is not an icing on the cake of life but the oven in which it is baked. — Orna Ross

It's good to have an end in mind but in the end what counts is how you travel. — Orna Ross

He has had her today but he has not had her. No man ever shall. — Orna Ross

You can have anything you want so long as you realise that you can't have everything you want. — Orna Ross

Our wound is our way. — Orna Ross

Calling all mothers! Some advice for you. If you have a little girl, don't be the kind of mother who says: "All I want is for her to be happy." No, no, no. Want her to be top of her class. Want her to become Chairman of the Board. Want her to marry a millionaire. Want something negotiable, so she has room to rebel. If all you want is for her to be happy, all she can do to separate from you is be miserable. — Orna Ross

I need a pill." "What about the pump?" "No, a pill." I took the container, a new one, nearly full, from its place on the window, shook one pill — Orna Ross

He loves the most beautiful woman in the world. And like Sir Lancelot, he shall love her exceedingly well. — Orna Ross

When looked at from the woman's side of the bed-sheet, most tales take a turning. — Orna Ross

A mother's place is in the wrong. — Orna Ross

Only in dreams and death can perfection be had. Life is broken and weary. — Orna Ross

A great poet can give nobler and more precious gifts to his country than the greatest philanthropist or politician. — Orna Ross

She's had nothing but love in this house. It's our toxic, sexist, over-sexed society. Girls are falling apart all over the place. It's the corporates." "Huh?" "The way they've cheapened and degraded sex." "Isn't that our fault too? We're the ones who threw off our tops and danced around maypoles in the People's Park." Drop the hypocrisy, we'd cried. Make love not war. Let it blossom, let it flow. Oh innocent us. — Orna Ross

All our lives, we long, we long, thinking it is the moon we long for. So how, when we meet it in the shape of a most fair woman, can we do less than leave all others for her? WB Yeats — Orna Ross

If you can't change your mind, you can't change anything. — Orna Ross

The eyes of the creative spirit can see in all directions. — Orna Ross

How you do money is how you do life. — Orna Ross

It is inner duty, not outer achievement, that wins peace. — Orna Ross

In ancient Ireland the soul had but to stretch out its arms to fill them with beauty. Now all manner of ugliness besets the world. — Orna Ross

Reached up to push the button that released liquid morphine into his veins. — Orna Ross

We parked in the lot by the lake and as we emerged from the car, the mountains seemed to have closed in around us and the quiet was palpable, inescapable, underlined by the distant, humming rush of Poulnapass Waterfall. — Orna Ross

Women come more easily to that wisdom which ancient peoples, and all wild peoples even now, think the only wisdom. — Orna Ross

When one is busy, as she was in Donegal, life whistles by. One struggles to keep up with oneself. It is vital, when one slows down, to be conscious of small things, small moments. To take pains. — Orna Ross

When life disappoints, one must apply one's will, not crumple. — Orna Ross

Where there's life, there's learning, and the truth is always calling us out of our pride. If we don't harken, it will call louder, and throw a situation at us. A pebble at first. If we still don't listen, we'll get a stone. Then a rock. Then a great crashing boulder. We must learn, or die. — Orna Ross

I shook my head, just as I had back then. "Let the one you've just had take effect," I said. "You'll feel better then." "There's no better for me." He put his fingers on my wrist, his grip surprisingly tight. "Please. Have mercy." But the pill was already beginning its work, or maybe it was the effort of making the request, of taking my arm, of saying such words. His eyelids began to droop. "You're a clever girl, always were," he whispered. "You know what to do." His eyes closed on the first compliment he ever gave me. — Orna Ross

Mr. Yeats makes great poetry out of what he calls his unhappiness about me, and he is happy in that. - Maud Gonne — Orna Ross

You can trust in nothing. Nothing is always there, holding all. — Orna Ross

Whatever happened to 'mother knows best'? — Orna Ross

He has been preparing his life and his poetry for just such a woman, just such intermingling of beauty and sorrow and mystery. But a woman like her will not settle into the role of helpmeet or muse; she is too adventurous, too vital, too fond of sensation. She will want to be, an ally. An equal. What can he, a poor student of poetry, offer her? Only his words. — Orna Ross

That thicket gave me my first thought of what a long poem should be. Its unpeopled, life-filled stillness, its silence held by the crash of breaking waves below. I thought of a poem as a place into which one could wander, away from the cares of life. I realized its characters should be as unreal, and as utterly real, as the shadows that people this thicket. — Orna Ross

They were magnificent all right, with the magnificence that can only grow in the ground of great foolishness. — Orna Ross

It takes a great reader to make a great book. — Orna Ross

I came to hate how everything gets junked in America: the food processed and adulterated with sugar and fat; the clothes cheapened; the TV dumbed down; the sex commodified. So that no matter how much we're given, we never feel sated, we're always craving. I came to see how we're addicted to addiction. — Orna Ross

All indies self-publish but not all self-publishers are indie. — Orna Ross

On Christmas Eve morning, hours before Zach left or Star arrived, my father asked me to kill him. I'd spent some of that night in a chair at the end of his bed. At one point, he woke and started to panic, then remembering, — Orna Ross

Marriage, after all, is only a little detail in life. — Orna Ross