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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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Emma Donoghue
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: October 24
Literary Historian
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Found
Room
Book
Rooms
Existentialism
Life
Hell
Mistress
Results
Crash
Courses
Motherhood
Course
Slave
Sleep
Result
Purpose
Destiny

More quotes by 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.
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Sometimes you must shed your skin to save it.
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When people write to me with stories, they are never ones that work for me. There's something mysterious about which ones catch you.
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Seriously, I think what all the puzzling over parenthood I had to do to write [a novel] ROOM taught me is that children can thrive in a remarkable range of situations.
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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.
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...real loneliness is having no one to miss. Think yourself lucky you've known something worth missing.
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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.
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There may be certain genres that men dominate, but fiction not so much. The question of prizes is tricky because there are so many prizes.
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Writing stories is my way of scratching that itch: my escape from the claustrophobia of individuality. It lets me, at least for a while, live more than one life, walk more than one path. Reading, of course, can do the same.
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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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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.
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I read three books a week.
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Nowadays, 'invisibility' was supposed to be the big problem, but the way I saw it was, all that mattered was to be visible to yourself.
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I watch his hands, they're lumpy but clever. Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents? Steppa laughs. Folks with other things to do?
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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.
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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.
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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'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.
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A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.
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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