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Schools don't really allow failure and yet it's part of any endeavour, not just writing.

Roddy Doyle

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Roddy Doyle
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: May 8
Lecturer
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Dublin city
Ruaidhrí Ó Dúill
Ruaidhri O Duill
Failure
School
Part
Writing
Really
Endeavour
Schools
Allow

More quotes by Roddy Doyle

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Sometimes adults seem as though they have cut a chord from being a child.
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I see people in terms of dialogue and I believe that people are their talk.
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I'm not recognised that much. I'm just a bald man in glasses and there's a rash of them in Dublin. It'd be different if I had a mohican.
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The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads.
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The problem with being Irish... is having 'Riverdance' on your back. It's a burden at times.
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When I was growing up, the exam system didn't allow you to write fiction, so you never did.
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No matter how close to personal experience a story might be, inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and, actually, whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words.
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When you grow up on an island, what matters is how you stand to the sea.
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She'd tried her hand at most things, but drew the line at honesty.
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Some of the people who look the most normal are probably the maddest people trying to look normal.
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I wouldn't go out of my way to experience the indignity of middle-age just because it might be good meat for a story.
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If you are a writer you're at home, which means you're out of touch. You have to make excuses to get out there and look at how the world is changing.
Roddy Doyle
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I've been asked why does Ireland produce so many great musicians, and the answer is it doesn't. When you count the great musicians Ireland has given the world in the last 20 years, you can do it on one hand.
Roddy Doyle
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You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it.
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I write short stories when a little idea occurs to me, that I know isn't a part of a novel that will stand by itself and should be concentrated.
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Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph. Until you get to page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety - it's the job.
Roddy Doyle
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I like naming characters.
Roddy Doyle
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She's a pot-of-tea-before-I-say-boo-to-you woman. There's always a pile of warm teabags in the sink when I come down, like what a horse would leave behind.
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If there is a heaven, Jane Austen is sitting in a small room with Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, listening to Duran Duran, forever. If there's a hell, she's standing.
Roddy Doyle
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My parents were sixty years married.
Roddy Doyle