Edna O'Brien: Self (segment "Dollygirls")
Quotes
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Herself (segment "Dollygirls") : [Edna O'Brien] You meet a boy now, or a man, and you don't really have to protest about your virginity. In fact, it will be a great disappointment to him if you say, you know, it's the first time, I mean he'll leave the room.
Herself (segment "Dollygirls") : The other thing that makes a woman free now is, I suppose, money. They have money and they can work so the dependence on a man isn't as great. But the thing that makes her very un-free and always will, I imagine, is although she has a sort of vagrant heart, a woman does tend to like being with one man even if it's only for three months. She's not as content, I think, going from bed to bed.
Herself (segment "Dollygirls") : You've always got decadent people but what is so strange now is that the most gifted, the most articulate and the most thinking, conscious people are decadent because of the time in history that they're alive in. And there's nothing else you can say to that unless you're God and if you're God you can say, "it's alright, I won't drop the bomb".
Herself (segment "Dollygirls") : I do. I believe in female promiscuity except that it happens a different way that a woman probably likes to shack up with a man for three months and then with another man whereas a man would like to shack up for an evening. And I think there's still this awful, and I wish we didn't have it, because it's such a handicap, this thing of, falling in love. You know, it's such a nuisance. And I think women, no man will agree to this but I'm sure it's true, women are more devoted and committed to the notion of falling in love and therefore they fall in love, than men are because it is the one territory of adventure that a woman has. She can't go across bloody Africa, or if she does she'll become pregnant or, or anyhow she can't. She just can't yet. And maybe never will.
