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Sometimes you must shed your skin to save it.

Emma Donoghue

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Emma Donoghue
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: October 24
Literary Historian
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Skin
Skins
Save
Sometimes
Must
Shed

More quotes by Emma Donoghue

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I've been in a long and happy relationship for 22 years and it's never inspired me to write anything. It's too good - nothing to say. Problems, conflict, that's what makes for good stories.
Emma Donoghue
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And as the years flowed by, some villagers told travelers of a beast and a beauty who lived in the castle and could be seen walking on the battlements, and others told of two beauties, and others, of two beasts.
Emma Donoghue
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I'm named after Jane Austen's Emma, and I've always been able to relate to her. She's strong, confident but quite tactless.
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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There are some tales not for telling, whether because they are too long, too precious, too laughable, too painful, too easy to need telling or too hard to explain. After all, after years and travels my secrets are all I have left to chew on in the night.
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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Stories are a different kind of true.
Emma Donoghue
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Maybe I’m a human, but I’m a me-and-Ma as well.
Emma Donoghue
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The way to my heart is through Belgian milk chocolate.
Emma Donoghue
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Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up.
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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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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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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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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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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You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just let's you get on with it.
Emma Donoghue
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At the door, there was one of those moment when two people realize that they like each other more than they know each other. This is nicer than the opposite situation, but more awkward. You try to remember the protocol for touching. You hate to gush, or presume to much, yet you are unwilling to let the moment pass without without some gesture
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 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.
Emma Donoghue
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Goodbye, Room. I wave up at Skylight. Say goodbye, I tell Ma. Goodbye, Room. Ma says it but on mute. I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.
Emma Donoghue