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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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Emma Donoghue
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: October 24
Literary Historian
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Anything
Conflict
Nothing
Problems
Writing
Relationship
Long
Happy
Years
Write
Good
Makes
Never
Stories
Problem
Inspired

More quotes by Emma Donoghue

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Change for your own sake, if you must, not for what you imagine another will ask of you.
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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 must say, in the case of Room, both the book and the film, I don't think being a lesbian author held me back at all.
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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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Everybody's damaged by something.
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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.
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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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...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 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.
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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.
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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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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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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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When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I'm five I know everything
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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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People move around so much in the world, things get lost.
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.
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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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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.
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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