Quotes About Flann O'Brien

Did you ever in your life,' he asked, 'mount a bicycle from the right?' 'I did not.' 'And why?' 'I do not know. I never thought about it.' He laughed at me indulgently. 'It is nearly an insoluble pancake,' he smiled, 'a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities, a snorter.

and you would be unutterably flibbergasted if you knew the number of stout bicycles that partake serenely of humanity.

There are five [rules of wisdom] in all. Always ask any questions that are to be asked and never answer any. Turn everything you hear to your own advantage. Always carry a repair outfit. Take left turns as much as possible. Never apply your front brake first.

In reply to an inquiry, it was explained that a satisfactory novel should be a self-evident sham to which the reader could regulate at will the degree of his credulity.

There's no nonsense about the gun. It's quick, it's merciful, and it's clean.

human existence de Selby has defined as 'a succession of static experiences each infinitely brief, a conception which he is thought to have arrived at from examining some old cinematographic films which belonged probably to his nephew

Recently in mixed company...I ventured to make the claim ( not without some show of humility and modesty ) that I was the greatest living swine.

Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.

The dusk was performing its customary intransitive operation of "gathering".