Brien Quotes & Sayings

I can't wait for the Republican debates to start and there's literally 65 guys on one stage. — Conan O'Brien

But we want young men. Romance. Love and things, I said, despondently. — Edna O'Brien

Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?
O'Brien: Of course he exists.
Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?
O'Brien: You do not exist. — George Orwell

The prime minister of Ireland will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day at the White House. So finally the Secret Service agents will have a drinking buddy. — Conan O'Brien

Conan O'Brien has talked about how comedians try to emulate their heroes, fall short, and end up doing their own thing. Johnny Carson tried to be Jack Benny but ended up Johnny Carson. David Letterman tried to copy Johnny Carson but ended up David Letterman. And Conan O'Brien tried to be David Letterman but ended up Conan O'Brien. In O'Brien's words, "It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique." Thank goodness. — Austin Kleon

Even though the Olympics take place during Ramadan, some Muslim athletes said they will not fast during games. Then, after sampling the British food, they said, on second thought, fasting sounds good. — Conan O'Brien

I want to wish you all luck with every bit of life you have ahead of you! Be strong. Be fearless. Be passionate. — Dylan 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

Whatever flaws or personal failings afflict them, it remains the case that the overwhelming majority of priests and politicians are honourable and honest - seeking to live out their beliefs and serve society. — Keith O'Brien

Presidential campaign getting kind of ugly, did you hear about this? Yesterday, a 27-year-old woman came for to deny rumors that she had an affair with Democratic front-runner John Kerry. The woman added, 'I would never cheat on Bill Clinton.' — Conan O'Brien

Besides, what's in a name? Actually, a lot. Whether taken from a parent or grandparent, some saint, or even the late great Elvis, your name insists another person's dream of what you should have been. The portrait of some ancestral ideal lingers through heirloom names. Gender specific names imply all sorts of expectations. More than just a signifier used to summon, instruct, address, accuse, sometimes praise us, our names define and thereby limit us. They put us in a cage. — Brien Piechos

I only use my sick days for hang-overs and soap opera weddings. — Kate O'Brien

Taxonomy, also called systematics, is the science-based hierarchical classification of the world's species. The area had traditionally been an obscure academic discipline dominated by erudite and professional dons who would memorize and interpret thousands of Latin species names. Advances seldom made the newspapers and caustic disputes lingered in the dust scientific literature for generations. That academic innocence would be lost forever when precise taxonomic recognition of species and subspecies came to be the basis for protection under the Endangered Species Act. — Stephen J. O'Brien

So Custer's Indian scouts get him to the village but they're like "Dude, don't attack this you will definitely die" and Custer is like "DIE? MORE LIKE . . . NOT DIE" and his translators and his soldiers are like "No bro pretty sure we will actually die if we do this" and Custer is like "I appreciate your concerns but I did not get this far by listening to people. LET'S SPLIT UP, GANG WE'LL COVER MORE GROUND THAT WAY. — Cory O'Brien

But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. — Tim O'Brien

I have nothing against Dylan O'Brien! He's one of my favorite people. I have so much respect for him and his work. — Katherine McNamara

And when you listened to one of his stories, you'd find yourself performing rapid calculations in your head, subtracting superlatives, figuring the square root of an absolute and then multiplying by maybe. Still, — Tim O'Brien

I did not set out to write another novel. One day I sat down with the thought of trying my hand at a piece of nonfiction, a personal memoir of youth, but over the next several weeks, without intending it, the work began evolving into what has become 'Tomcat in Love.' — Tim O'Brien

Kindness. The most unkind thing of all. — Edna O'Brien

People liking you or not liking you is an accident and is to do with them and not you. That goes for love too, only more so. — Edna O'Brien

Hmmm ... I never get the answer I think I'm going to get. — Kate O'Brien

Evil is even, truth is an odd number and death is a full stop. — Flann O'Brien

My heroes are guys like Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Matt Damon. These are amazing actors with amazing careers that every actor should aspire to. I'm not saying I'm going to get anywhere close. It's not going to be an easy feat. I'm just in awe of their careers. — Dylan O'Brien

They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards. — Tim O'Brien

And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. — Tim O'Brien

In fiction workshops, we tend to focus on matters of verisimilitude largely because such issues are so much easier to talk about than the failure of imagination. — Tim O'Brien

Inside I feel much like a 12-year-old or a 17-year-old who knows big words. — Tim O'Brien

Imagination, like reality, has its limits. — Tim O'Brien

Early on, they were timing my contract with an egg timer. — Conan O'Brien

NBC executives say that if Donald Trump does run for president, they will not renew The Apprentice. So some good may come out of this. — Conan O'Brien

We are different people - you get a different take on the band whoever you speak to. Somehow, at the end of it, it goes through the filtering process and out comes the Radiohead thing. — Ed O'Brien

A man who takes into consideration the feelings of others even when arranging the manner of his own death shows a nobility of character which compels the admiration of all classes. — Flann O'Brien

Same-sex marriage would eliminate entirely in law the basic idea of a mother and a father for every child. It would create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father. — Keith O'Brien

Notable American Women is a weird nougat of a book that suggests Coetzee, Kafka, Beckett, Barthelme, O'Brien, Orwell, Paley, Borges-and none of them exactly. Finally you just have to chew it for its own private juice. — Padgett Powell

Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable. — Flann O'Brien

The horses came thundering toward Margaret. "Get down!" Daniel tackled her to the dusty ground.
The breath puffed out of her. She struggled to free herself, but his strong body kept her pinned beneath him. She could smell the clean scent of soap underneath the scent of his skin.
Never in her life had she felt so helpless and dependent. And protected. The word whispered through her brain with a gentle allure. — Colleen Coble

Obama was heckled by someone who said, 'Don't forget about medical marijuana.' The Secret Service has narrowed the suspects down to everyone in L.A. — Conan O'Brien

Genuine freedom is possible only where there is genuine love. And genuine love is not possible without truth. — Michael O'Brien

Texas is reportedly going to give college students the right to carry guns on campus. So I guess that next semester, every college student in Texas is getting straight A's. — Conan O'Brien

A congressman sent a tweet that compared president Obama to Adolf Hitler. He has now apologized. It's not helping that he apologized to Hitler. — Conan O'Brien

Never before had I believed or suspected that I had a soul but just then I knew I had. I knew also that my soul was friendly, was my senior in years and was solely concerned for my own welfare. For convenience I called him Joe. I felt a little reassured to know that I was not altogether alone. Joe was helping me. — Flann O'Brien

I don't think I should be telling you every 10 minutes what to think. I like to leave the audience alone with the magic. I tend to trust the material, or I don't do it. — Jack O'Brien

On Election Day, Ralph Nader will appear on the presidential ballot in only 45 states. Yeah, Nader said, this is really disappointing, I wanted to embarrass myself in all 50 states. That was the plan. — Conan O'Brien

The world comes at me that way - comes at me in clumps of stuff, sometimes little vignettes and sometimes whole stories. And then the rest is erased by the internal filter that erases things for the same reason you'd forget swatting a mosquito. — Tim O'Brien

I share an office with Jason Sudeikis, and I'm friends with him, so I end up writing for him a lot. — Mike O'Brien

I don't think teens make mistakes when they fall in love. You experience what you experience and you take away what you can from it; it is very human. — Dylan O'Brien

The Natural Law which God has written into our beings cannot be entirely eradicated, but it can be gravely deformed, leading to distortion of consciousness and conscience, and hence our actions. — Michael O'Brien

So basically
be careful never to be too awesome
or you will be mysteriously executed
just like Martin Luther King
and Gandhi
and Abraham Lincoln
and JFK
and Malcolm X
and Sitting Bull
and Crazy Horse
and... wow
why are we so mean to our best people? — Cory O'Brien

Horses are the ruination of everyone, your father has a craze for them but then we all do crazy things. — Edna O'Brien

When you decide something's right, there's nothing that can stop you from doing it. — Caragh M. O'Brien

Perhaps more than ever before, there is that aggressive secularism and there are those who would indeed try to destroy our Christian heritage and culture and take God from the public square. Religion must not be taken from the public square. — Keith O'Brien

Scientists have found a way to keep middle-aged female mice from going through menopause. Now they're working on a way to keep middle-aged male mice from buying expensive sports cars. — Conan O'Brien

And in the end, really, there's nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe Oh. — Tim 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

Ow, ow, ow, Billy hurt! Billy wanna go home! — Michael D. O'Brien

Is the capacity for cruelty inherent in all of us? — Soledad O'Brien

Michele Bachmann said she wants her three daughters to learn to shoot a gun. Mostly so they can put her campaign out of its misery. — Conan O'Brien

Doubt is unacceptable and should not enter you; it is merely evil trying to divert you and increase the difficulty of your task — William O'Brien

You know why divorce costs so much? Because it is worth it! — Dan O'Brien

Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you watch a lot of Cartoon Network and drink mid-price Chardonnay at 11 in the morning. — Conan O'Brien

During the Democratic presidential debate Howard Dean started off by apologizing to the crowd for having a cold. Then John Kerry apologized for once having a cold while serving his country in Vietnam. — Conan O'Brien

In a war without aim, you tend not to aim. You close your eyes, close your heart. The consequences become hit or miss in the most literal sense. — Tim O'Brien

Over the weekend, Vladimir Putin scored eight goals during a hockey game. It happened just after he had the goalie executed. — Conan O'Brien

I never wanted to be aligned to a mature group because they go off and become politicians and stuff. — Richard O'Brien

CBS news anchor Dan Rather has interviewed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. When asked what it was like to talk to a crazy man, Saddam said, 'It's not so bad.' — Conan O'Brien

I cannot remember much, I cannot feel much. Maybe erasure is necessary. Maybe the human spirit defends itself as the body does, attacking infection, enveloping and destroying those malignancies that would otherwise consume us. — Tim O'Brien

Life's too short to be working with divas. — Richard O'Brien

Flashes of my past lives kept crawling across my vision. I had Akima's laugh, Eve's blind ability to love, and Marrah's unwavering belief in family. I was all of these women and none of them. Their souls carried along inside of me but unmistakable from my own.
I saw their lives in pieces, their triumphs and sorrows, loved ones gained and lost. They were all different yet somehow the same. We were sisters and daughters, lovers and wives.
Pacey O'Brien-Lilith — Ashley Jeffery

What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.
I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again. — Tim O'Brien

Since I was a kid. I had this series by Ballantine Books about the history of World Wars I and II. In my 20s, it was the Vietnam War literature of novelists like Tim O'Brien, Philip Caputo, and Tobias Wolff, and then nonfiction such as "A Bright Shining Lie" by Neil Sheehan and "The Best and Brightest" by David Halberstam . Those are the two best histories of Vietnam. — George Packer

sweetness on the tongue and a promise of scent on the night air. It was sensual in the best meaning of that word, saturating every sense at once, so that the flesh was known, finally, as a thing of such goodness that man blessed his Creator from morning to night for having made him. Here in this medieval town where once an extraordinary little fellow had burst forth with songs to God, as a passionate lover speaks to his bride, here the restoration of man to his own true home was no longer the dream of saints. It was the wedding feast. It was a word made flesh. — Michael D. O'Brien

In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. — Tim O'Brien

Today Facebook went public, just as Myspace's last user went private. — Conan O'Brien

But any book that is any good must be, to some extent, autobiographical, because one cannot and should not fabricate emotions; and although style and narrative are crucial, the bulwark, emotion, is what finally matters. With luck, talent, and studiousness, one manages to make a little pearl, or egg, or something ... — Edna 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

'Shrek 2' made over $120 million during its first week. In a related story, John Kerry asked Shrek to marry him. — Conan O'Brien

What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness. — Flann O'Brien

I had not the heart to tell her that great love stories told of the pain and separateness between men and women. — Edna O'Brien

Trump Entertainment Resorts declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Or as Donald Trump describes Chapter 11, "Back-to-back number ones!" — Conan O'Brien

I could feel my moral compass as a soldier, in danger of - I could feel the squeeze, the pressure of frustration and anger and fear combining on me ... I felt the danger; I felt the squeeze of it. — Tim O'Brien

For me it's connection-the pleasure of an expansive, long-ranging dinner conversation with people who do all sorts of things and being able to come back to that night, night after night, and pick up threads and follow them. There's a voyeuristic pleasure, there's a synthetic pleasure, but primarily it's the pleasure of being able to live in a frame of time that the rest of life conspires to annihilate. — Richard Powers

The campaign to put a woman on the $20 bill has narrowed the choices down to four finalists. The four finalists are Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Flo from the Progressive Insurance ads. — Conan O'Brien

Someone once said there was no statute of limitations on the sins of youth. — Kathleen O'Brien

A bank in Washington was robbed by two men in George W. Bush masks. Luckily, right afterwards two guys in President Obama masks came and bailed the bank out, so everything is fine. — Conan O'Brien

And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body
her life. — Tim O'Brien

On Sunday night, my husband makes a five-course family dinner. — Soledad O'Brien

Kiowa who saw it happen said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something-Just Boom-then down. Not like in the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle-not like that. Kiowa said. The bastard just flat fuck fell. Boom down. Nothing else. — Tim O'Brien

Don't throw away luck on little stuff. Save it up. — Tim O'Brien

In a way winter is the real spring, the time when the inner things happen, the resurge of nature. — Edna O'Brien

According to some reports coming out of Washington today, President Obama said Kanye West is a 'jackass.' Not since 'yes, we can' has Obama found a slogan so many Americans can get behind. — Conan O'Brien

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. — Edna O'Brien

The Bible does not deny that we were various things - addicts, homosexuals, hateful, prideful, pornographic masturbators - but that is what we were (past tense) (1 Cor. 6:9-11; Titus 3:3-5). The emphasis in Scripture is on what we are and what we are called to be. The Christian does not say, Hello, my name is _ and I am an X Y or Z." The Christian says I was dead, but now I am alive. The Christian says I am a struggling sinner, yet I am a saint. The Christians says I am a new creation; I am transformed. — Paul O'Brien

The fact that someone came forward and offered $1.25 million to make a movie was astonishing. We were also allowed to keep many of the original stage cast. — Richard O'Brien

Hillary Clinton has reportedly accepted Barack Obama's offer to become secretary of state. That's what they're saying in the New York Times. Yeah, according to Bill Clinton, this is the first time in 20 years that Hillary has said 'yes.' — Conan O'Brien

One thing that's certain: around the corner from every ugly thing, there's something really beautiful. If we stop at every bitter interaction; we'll never reach our destination. — Soledad O'Brien

Rick Perry said America's revolutionary war was fought in the 16th century. When told it was actually the 18th century, Perry apologized and said, 'I never said I was a geology major.' — Conan O'Brien

She was an auxiliary nurse but training to be a true nurse because that was her calling, to serve mankind. She was a Martha. There were Marys and Marthas, but Marys got all the limelight because of being Christ's handmaiden, but Marthas were far more sincere. — Edna O'Brien

There is some good news for John McCain. According to the latest polls, which came out today, John McCain has started to open up a lead over Barack Obama. This is true. Yeah. The USA Today poll has McCain ahead by ten points. The 'CBS News' poll has the two tied. And the MSNBC poll says that Obama won the election last week. — Conan O'Brien

Despite a legacy consisting of enough violence and death for twenty men, Jackson admitted to having two regrets on his deathbed: "I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't murder John C. Calhoun." In a life rich with murdering people for little-to-no reason, Jackson's only regret was that he didn't kill quite enough people. People like Calhoun, who, it should be noted, was Jackson's vice president. No one is safe from Jackson's wrath. — Daniel O'Brien

Dream hard. Work harder. Shine. — Caragh M. O'Brien