Roddy Doyle Quotes
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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.
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Some of the people who look the most normal are probably the maddest people trying to look normal.
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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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When I was growing up, the exam system didn't allow you to write fiction, so you never did.
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I like naming characters.
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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.
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The best way to reveal a character is to get them to open their mouths.
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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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My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.
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It's a big con job. We have sold the myth of Dublin as a sexy place incredibly well; because it is a dreary little dump most of the time.
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I'm going to sound like an old man but at my age, it's lovely doing something that you've never done before.
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Most working days I can be at my desk for nine hours a day.
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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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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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Schools don't really allow failure and yet it's part of any endeavour, not just writing.
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It's hard for me to measure them, or to assess my books because I'm so close to them.
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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.
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The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads.
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The problem with being Irish... is having 'Riverdance' on your back. It's a burden at times.
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I see people in terms of dialogue and I believe that people are their talk.
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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.
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I don't work to any commissions. I do what I want to do.
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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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I do enjoy Gothic fiction or books about zombies if they are well written and I like vampires.
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When you grow up on an island, what matters is how you stand to the sea.
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Sometimes adults seem as though they have cut a chord from being a child.
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To claim that music is more important than oxygen would be trite and sentimental. It would also be true.
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My parents were sixty years married.
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It's great meeting children because you never know what they will say.
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When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.
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