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Stories are a different kind of true.

Emma Donoghue

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Emma Donoghue
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: October 24
Literary Historian
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Kind
True
Stories
Truth
Different
Writing

More quotes by Emma Donoghue

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I think I read Susan Brownmiller's classic book called Femininity when I was about 16. So yeah, it's been part of my mindset since a very early age. To me, what's crucial is to tell women's stories but also to tell them in a way that is fearless.
Emma Donoghue
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I read three books a week.
Emma Donoghue
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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.
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.
Emma Donoghue
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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.
Emma Donoghue
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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.
Emma Donoghue
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I think I know what it's like to have a family that the outside world sees as peculiar or lacking.
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
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I'm finding that success is way more time-consuming than failure ever was.
Emma Donoghue
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For all that being a parent is normal statistically, it's not normal psychologically. It produces some of the most extreme emotions you'll ever have...
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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...sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.
Emma Donoghue
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I'm really aware that in fiction, women are pretty much equal. There's a lot of very successful women novelists. Not so much [for women writers working] in film.
Emma Donoghue
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The sound of the pages turning was the sound of magic. The dry liquid feel of paper under fingertips was what magic felt like.
Emma Donoghue
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Writing is nearly always a matter of finding whatever your brain needs to trick it into being creative, and in my case, a tiny little bit of fact just seems to work.
Emma Donoghue
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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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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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People move around so much in the world, things get lost.
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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You cannot predict literary success the only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well.
Emma Donoghue