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The problem with being Irish... is having 'Riverdance' on your back. It's a burden at times.

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
Problem
Back
Irish
Burden
Times

More quotes by 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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I don't work to any commissions. I do what I want to do.
Roddy Doyle
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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.
Roddy Doyle
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Most working days I can be at my desk for nine hours a day.
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 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.
Roddy Doyle
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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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The best way to reveal a character is to get them to open their mouths.
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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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.
Roddy Doyle
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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.
Roddy Doyle
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My parents were sixty years married.
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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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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When I was a kid, if you didn't speak Irish, you really wanted to. And you played Gaelic games and you didn't pay any attention to what was happening in the outside world, because really, the - Ireland was the center of the universe. And I don't think that's the case anymore, although, admittedly, it is the center of the universe.
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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The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads.
Roddy Doyle
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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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Sometimes adults seem as though they have cut a chord from being a child.
Roddy Doyle