Best 22 quotes of Damian Barr on MyQuotes

Damian Barr

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    Damian Barr

    Because I work at other things, whenever I get a chance to write I feel grateful for it. But I learned that sometimes, I couldn't do anything else and I shouldn't plan to do anything that night or the next day. There were times when I was writing something difficult for days or weeks and when I'd finish, I would get up and go out of my shed into the garden and be sick. I had terrible migraines.

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    Damian Barr

    I am a gay writer, but I am also a Scottish writer and some days a lazy writer, or a funny writer. Being gay is just a part of who I am.

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    Damian Barr

    I could never do just one thing, but everything I do is in the direction of stories. Sometimes writing them, sometimes showcasing them, sometimes letting people see them.

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    Damian Barr

    I cut a lot of cringy sex stuff and a lot of stuff I thought was too personal. I think secret gardens are very special. I think we all have to have them. I think the secret of memoirs is keeping those parts of yourself off the page, which makes what you do share more valuable.

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    Damian Barr

    I do feel a responsibility. It's a privilege to be able to speak about it, but I don't speak for all gay people.

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    Damian Barr

    I had to do things to myself on the page that had been done to me in real life. I had to try and drown myself in the bath. You have to do that. And the impulse is to rescue yourself and to spare the reader, but I can't rescue myself. And why should I spare the reader when nobody spared me? It's telling people what happened.

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    Damian Barr

    I started writing when I was a journalist. But every time I sat down to write a novel or a story, I ended up writing about myself, which was incredibly annoying and self-involved.

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    Damian Barr

    I think the secret of memoirs is keeping those parts of yourself off the page, which makes what you do share more valuable.

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    Damian Barr

    I went through in the edits and cut tons of stuff that was "funny" because if it wasn't funny at the time, so it shouldn't be funny now. It's about having that unity of experience. You have to try and take away your hindsight knowledge of a situation.

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    Damian Barr

    Memory implies that there is some static time and place you can go back to, whereas if you relive it by trying to put yourself back in that context, its more nuanced, less black and white. More traumatic, but also more exciting. When I knew I had to write about things that would be painful, I put off doing it for ages. But then eventually the fear of not doing it becomes greater than the fear of doing it.

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    Damian Barr

    Scotland has always been independent. We have our own legal system, our own culture; I don't see the issue. We are different and I think we should celebrate those differences within the union. I can see what would be lost, but don't necessarily see what would be gained by breaking away. What does upset me is that I can't vote in Scotland.

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    Damian Barr

    The hardest bits of my book to read were the easiest bits to write because they were the most immediate. Probably because I had never stopped thinking about them on some level. Those bits I was just channelling and those were the most exciting writing days. The bits I found harder were the bits that happen in between, you know, the rest of living. There were whole years, whole houses, that I just got rid of.

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    Damian Barr

    The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are very often not really what happened. And as I started to write stuff down, I started to challenge what I thought I knew about myself, my culture, my family, all of it. It was a huge, destroying process that completely took over my life. I just wasn't here, I mean I was physically present, but I wasn't here, I was back in the 1980s.

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    Damian Barr

    You don't realise how much you're holding onto until you start to let go of it. I had had loads of therapy and thought I had come to terms with who I am, but there's something in the process of writing that unlocks other experiences, other emotions and you have to be prepared for that.

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    Damian Barr

    I want to watch you walk through the world before you leave it and if you stumble I'll rush forward to catch you. I like to think I'd show you the kindness you never showed me. I'd like you to owe me a favour. I want to show you that I did it. I want you to be proud of me.

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    Damian Barr

    Maggie, tou made it possible -but not probably for me to be the man I am now.

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    Damian Barr

    Mary the Canary lives in a cloud of perfume and colours. She's an auxiliary nurse by day and a country and western singer by night: bed pans and power ballass. She's so glamorous she makes Mrs Hart look plain. She is the other woman and I'm bring trained to hate her even though I've never met her.

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    Damian Barr

    Quotes › Authors › D › Damian Barr › The stories we tell ourselves about... The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are very often not really what happened. And as I started to write stuff down, I started to challenge what I thought I knew about myself, my culture, my family, all of it. It was a huge, destroying process that completely took over my life. I just wasn't here, I mean I was physically present, but I wasn't here, I was back in the 1980s.

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    Damian Barr

    Reading is an act of radical empathy: turning the page instead of turning away.

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    Damian Barr

    Researching and writing my novel has taken me to some really dark places. It is when you are in these dark places that you can see: there is always hope, there is always love.

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    Damian Barr

    There's no place like home. No place safer. No place scarier.

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    Damian Barr

    The second time I try to kill a man I'm fourteen. Killing a man seems a very grown-up thing to do - like writing in Biro.