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A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.

Emma Donoghue

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Emma Donoghue
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: October 24
Literary Historian
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Always
Memoir
Authentic
Telling
Places
Gets
Novel
Situation
Different

More quotes by Emma Donoghue

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I am clumsy, a late and nervous driver, and despise all sports except a little gentle dancing or yoga.
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I found motherhood a crash course in existentialism (what is my purpose in life, am I mistress or slave of my destiny, when the hell do I get some sleep?) and [the book] ROOM was the result.
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I hate desks they make me feel like a child doing homework.
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Stories are a different kind of true.
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I was highly aware, in writing [the book] ROOM, that there are unsavoury aspects to our interest in such cases, and I thought it was rather honester to include discussion of media representation in the novel itself than to cling to the high moral ground by merely avoiding scenes of voyeurism, for instance.
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I guess the feminism in Room springs to mind most.
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I tend to be so lost in the work that I don't notice the weather. My partner will come home and say, 'Beautiful day, wasn't it?' and I'll say, 'Was it?' as I won't have noticed the real world at all.
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...Sometimes I suspect that what had really happened was that we became more resigned, more cynical, raised our pain thresholds as we lowered our expectations. All in all, settled for less.
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I've certainly seen stats that if you have a woman director or a woman screenwriter, the number of female characters goes way up.
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I remember manners, that's when people are scared to make other persons mad.
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So much as I enjoy big novels of epic sweep, I often find, say, if they follow several generations, by the third generation, I'm not caring about the people anymore.
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Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene.
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I got in the habit of giving away a book as soon as I've finished it because I lived in a housing co-op at Cambridge and had no space to keep books.
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We used to call it her Cinderella complex, because often when she had agreed to go out in the evening she would be seized by panic and announce that she had nothing to wear.
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Everybody's damaged by something.
Emma Donoghue
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For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.
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...sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.
Emma Donoghue
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This is a bad story.” “Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.” “No, you should,” I say. “But—” “I don’t want there to be bad stories and me not know them.
Emma Donoghue
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I always wince a little bit when I send me to each of my new books. I wince at submitting myself to my father's judgment. But, of course, he's such a fond father that he always writes back, saying it's the greatest thing ever written.
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I'm finding that success is way more time-consuming than failure ever was.
Emma Donoghue