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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: 55
Born: 1969
Born: October 24
Literary Historian
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Authentic
Telling
Places
Gets
Novel
Situation
Different
Always
Memoir

More quotes by Emma Donoghue

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I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way.
Emma Donoghue
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I guess the feminism in Room springs to mind most.
Emma Donoghue
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I'm finding that success is way more time-consuming than failure ever was.
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Everybody's damaged by something.
Emma Donoghue
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She leaped into space, high, higher than she'd ever been in her life. She came down with a clean snap, and the crowd scattered like birds from the swing of her feet.
Emma Donoghue
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Identity politics are wearisome you don't want to go on speaking for any one group as a writer.
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I remember manners, that's when people are scared to make other persons mad.
Emma Donoghue
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Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up.
Emma Donoghue
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The paradox of publicity is that even as we do it, we know it's killing off the chance of another reader happening across our book in the ideal state of innocence.
Emma Donoghue
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Something we do know is that review coverage does go to male authors more than women authors. That's a fact. I think it's one of those examples of unconscious bias: If you hire a lot of male journalists, they're more likely to pick up the latest Ian McEwan novel than the latest A.S. Byatt novel.
Emma Donoghue
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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.
Emma Donoghue
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Change for your own sake, if you must, not for what you imagine another will ask of you.
Emma Donoghue
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I was anticipating that some readers might misread [the book] ROOM itself as a hymn to homeschooling.
Emma Donoghue
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I thought one way to try to hold on to the power was to write the script myself. That way, I could say to filmmakers, I'm not asking you to hire me unseen. I'm just saying, 'Here's my script. Can we work together?' So that worked out well.
Emma Donoghue
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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.
Emma Donoghue
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I hate desks they make me feel like a child doing homework.
Emma Donoghue
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When I tell her what I’m thinking and she tells me what she’s thinking, our each ideas jumping into the other’s head, like coulouring blue crayon on top of yellow that makes green.
Emma Donoghue
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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.
Emma Donoghue
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With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made.
Emma Donoghue
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I think ultimately the film 'Room' is a kind of hymn to motherhood and to the everyday heroism of parents who find their smiles in terrible times.
Emma Donoghue