Best 123 quotes of Emma Donoghue on MyQuotes

Emma Donoghue

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    Emma Donoghue

    Actually,the nightmarish thought occurred to me that with electronic delivery of books becoming a norm, soon writers may be expected to provide several versions of their book, ranging from the Easy to the Complex, and buyers will choose what they're in the mood for with the click of a button! I do hope not.

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    Emma Donoghue

    A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.

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    Emma Donoghue

    And as the years flowed by, some villagers told travelers of a beast and a beauty who lived in the castle and could be seen walking on the battlements, and others told of two beauties, and others, of two beasts.

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    Emma Donoghue

    At the door, there was one of those moment when two people realize that they like each other more than they know each other. This is nicer than the opposite situation, but more awkward. You try to remember the protocol for touching. You hate to gush, or presume to much, yet you are unwilling to let the moment pass without without some gesture

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    Emma Donoghue

    Before I had kids, I thought you should never lie to a kid. But now I've had them, I realize you almost lie to them by definition, because if you're trying to summarize something for your 1-year-old, you put it in very simple terms. You only gradually complicate the explanation as they get older.

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    Emma Donoghue

    Books are the air I breathe, so I don't notice the seasons.

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    Emma Donoghue

    Change for your own sake, if you must, not for what you imagine another will ask of you.

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    Emma Donoghue

    [E]verywhere I'm looking at kids, adults mostly don't seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don't want to actually play with them, they'd rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there's a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn't even hear.

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    Emma Donoghue

    Feminism is still one of those taboo words, so hardly anybody talks about it. People usually go gender-neutral and say the book and film [Room] are about "the triumph of the human spirit.

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    Emma Donoghue

    For all that being a parent is normal statistically, it's not normal psychologically. It produces some of the most extreme emotions you'll ever have...

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    Emma Donoghue

    Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room." Ma says it but on mute. I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.

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    Emma Donoghue

    He [Ma's Tooth] was part of her a minute ago but now he's not. Just a thing.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I actually tried to think of the story [Room] in gender-neutral terms at first and said to myself, "OK, would this work if it were a man?" Well no, you can't make a man pregnant, so it's got to be a woman.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I always wince a little bit when I send me to each of my new books. I wince at submitting myself to my father's judgment. But, of course, he's such a fond father that he always writes back, saying it's the greatest thing ever written.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I am clumsy, a late and nervous driver, and despise all sports except a little gentle dancing or yoga.

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    Emma Donoghue

    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.

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    Emma Donoghue

    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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    Emma Donoghue

    I guess the feminism in "Room" springs to mind most.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I hate desks; they make me feel like a child doing homework.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I'm finding that success is way more time-consuming than failure ever was.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I'm really aware that in fiction, women are pretty much equal. There's a lot of very successful women novelists. Not so much [for women writers working] in film.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I'm very interested in how idealistic young people can get caught up in all sorts of systems of extreme belief, you know, whether it's cults or whether it's suicide bombers.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I'm very keen. Adaptations of other people's work, too. I got fascinated by the adaptation process, so I think that'd be a really interesting task. I would happily write original screenplays as well. I think it's become one of my favorite genres.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I needed to do a lot of saying no. I had a lot of [interest] from people who I just didn't think were quite right for it. And I didn't want a bad film to be made of the book, either a sentimental one or a creepy one, so I did a lot of, "No thank you." Then when the right filmmaker came along, yes, I suppose I presented myself very much as wanting to be the writer.

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    Emma Donoghue

    In the publishing world, most editors are probably women. So I don't see the publishing world as a male-dominated one, especially within fiction.

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    Emma Donoghue

    In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time...I don't know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well...I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter all over the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there's only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I read a lot of social history. If I'm in an art gallery and a picture intrigues me, I immediately write down the title and I google it. I do a lot of googling and looking out for good stories. I can almost smell them sometimes.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I read three books a week.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I really like to keep my palette small but to be very intense, very myopic.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I remember manners, that's when people are scared to make other persons mad.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I say "on principle" [regarding 'lesbian writer'] because whenever you get one of your minority labels applied, like "Irish Writer," "Canadian Writer," "Woman Writer," "Lesbian Writer" - any of those categories - you always slightly wince because you're afraid that people will think that means you're only going to write about Canada or Ireland, you know.

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    Emma Donoghue

    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.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I think about Old Nick carrying me into the truck, I'm dizzy like I'm going to fall down. "Scared is what you're feeling," says Ma, "but brave is what you're doing." "Huh?" "Scaredybrave." "Scave." Word sandwiches always make her laugh but I wasn't being funny.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I think I know what it's like to have a family that the outside world sees as peculiar or lacking.

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    Emma Donoghue

    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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    Emma Donoghue

    I think it would be a shame for any writer to let their publishers in any way corral them into a single genre.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I think sometimes the way to preserve the magic of a book is to throw it away - meaning, not to cling to the way a book does its magic but to find a cinematic equivalent.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I think there are few films out there that take motherhood seriously.

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    Emma Donoghue

    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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    Emma Donoghue

    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.

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    Emma Donoghue

    It's all real in Outside, everything there is, because I saw an airplane in the blue between the clouds. Ma and me can't go there because we don't know the secret code, but it's real all the same. Before I didn't know to be mad that we can't open Door, my head was too small to have Outside in it.

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    Emma Donoghue

    It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.

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    Emma Donoghue

    It turns up the heat under a narrative when you limit the characters in their movements or their freedoms.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I've always been religiously inclined, but it doesn't come up in most of my books.

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    Emma Donoghue

    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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    Emma Donoghue

    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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    Emma Donoghue

    I was anticipating that some readers might misread [the book] ROOM itself as a hymn to homeschooling.

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    Emma Donoghue

    I was highly aware, in writing [the book] ROOM, that there are unsavoury aspects to our interest in such cases, and I thought it was rather honester to include discussion of media representation in the novel itself than to cling to the high moral ground by merely avoiding scenes of voyeurism, for instance.