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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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Emma Donoghue
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: October 24
Literary Historian
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Wells
Worked
Well
Asking
Writing
Hold
Trying
Saying
Hire
Work
Write
Unseen
Way
Thought
Filmmaker
Power
Script
Together
Scripts

More quotes by Emma Donoghue

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For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.
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Everyone's got a different story.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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've certainly seen stats that if you have a woman director or a woman screenwriter, the number of female characters goes way up.
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Everybody's damaged by something.
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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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...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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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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The sound of the pages turning was the sound of magic. The dry liquid feel of paper under fingertips was what magic felt like.
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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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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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...real loneliness is having no one to miss. Think yourself lucky you've known something worth missing.
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I guess the feminism in Room springs to mind most.
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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People move around so much in the world, things get lost.
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Stories are a different kind of true.
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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