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When I was growing up, the exam system didn't allow you to write fiction, so you never did.

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
Write
Didn
Writing
Never
Exam
Allow
Fiction
System
Growing

More quotes by Roddy Doyle

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I like naming characters.
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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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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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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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I don't work to any commissions. I do what I want to do.
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I see people in terms of dialogue and I believe that people are their talk.
Roddy Doyle
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If you're from Dublin, for example, chances are you live with your family, if you're lucky enough to, right up to the mid-20s. And most of the people I know, when they finally sort of set off on their own, they don't stray all that far.
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Most working days I can be at my desk for nine hours a day.
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The best way to reveal a character is to get them to open their mouths.
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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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My parents were sixty years married.
Roddy Doyle
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When you grow up on an island, what matters is how you stand to the sea.
Roddy Doyle
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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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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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Sometimes adults seem as though they have cut a chord from being a child.
Roddy Doyle
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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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She'd tried her hand at most things, but drew the line at honesty.
Roddy Doyle
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My novels come from within me they are things I feel I want to do.
Roddy Doyle
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Some of the people who look the most normal are probably the maddest people trying to look normal.
Roddy Doyle