Quote

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.

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
Experience
Close
Stories
Personal
Part
Becomes
Might
Happened
Matter
Story
Right
Actually
Inevitably
Going
Whether
Irrelevant
Words
Choosing

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.
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I like naming characters.
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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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When you grow up on an island, what matters is how you stand to the sea.
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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.
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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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Sometimes adults seem as though they have cut a chord from being a child.
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I don't work to any commissions. I do what I want to do.
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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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.
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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.
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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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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Some of the people who look the most normal are probably the maddest people trying to look normal.
Roddy Doyle
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My parents were sixty years married.
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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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.
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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The problem with being Irish... is having 'Riverdance' on your back. It's a burden at times.
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