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" I am clumsy, a late and nervous driver, and despise all sports except a little gentle dancing or yoga. "
Emma Donoghue
I Am
Sports
Nervous
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" I'm not at all snobby about book prizes and how they pollute the world of literature. Just like with the Olympics, a little bit of competition gets people truly engrossed in the business of literature. "
Emma Donoghue
Business
Book
Competition
" I've always been religiously inclined, but it doesn't come up in most of my books. "
Emma Donoghue
Up
Always
Been
" It's painful to consider anything but writing. "
Emma Donoghue
Writing
Anything
Consider
" The way to my heart is through Belgian milk chocolate. "
Emma Donoghue
Way
Milk
Heart
" I'm a huge planner, more and more so as the years go by. "
Emma Donoghue
Go
Years
Planner
" Identity politics are wearisome; you don't want to go on speaking for any one group as a writer. "
Emma Donoghue
Group
Go
Identity
" One thing I like about historical fiction is that I'm not constantly focusing on me, or people like me; you're obliged to concentrate on lives that are completely other than your own. "
Emma Donoghue
You
Historical
Like
" A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places. "
Emma Donoghue
Always
Situation
Places
" The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side. "
Emma Donoghue
Someone
Life
Great
" You cannot predict literary success; the only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well. "
Emma Donoghue
Success
Well
You
" I hate desks; they make me feel like a child doing homework. "
Emma Donoghue
Child
Feel
Doing
" I've been writing full-time since I was 23. "
Emma Donoghue
Been
Writing
Full-Time
" I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way. "
Emma Donoghue
Off
Order
Writing
" 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. "
Emma Donoghue
Home
Say
Weather
" Ah yes, the paradox of publicity is that even as we do it, we know it's killing off the chance of another reader happening across our book in the ideal state of innocence. "
Emma Donoghue
Innocence
Know
Off
" Every parent has those moments where they look at their child and think, 'There's a demon in those eyes and no one can see it but me!' "
Emma Donoghue
Parent
Think
Child
" I'm named after Jane Austen's Emma, and I've always been able to relate to her. She's strong, confident but quite tactless. "
Emma Donoghue
Always
Strong
Her
" You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it. "
Emma Donoghue
Childhood
Unhappy
Said
" I have never been depressed or thrown a plate, which I attribute to the cathartic effects of writing books about people whose lives are more grueling than mine. "
Emma Donoghue
Never
People
Books
" I'm finding that success is way more time-consuming than failure ever was. "
Emma Donoghue
Failure
Success
More
" I love it when novels contain a broad cast of characters, including queer ones. "
Emma Donoghue
Queer
Characters
Cast
" There's no neutral language about travel. Either travel is described in ways that make it sound kind of shallow or just glossy or silly or a way for rich people to spend their time; or else travel is often described in quite derogatory ways, you know, like immigrants swarming across borders, for instance. "
Emma Donoghue
Travel
Time
Rich
" 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. "
Emma Donoghue
Parent
You
Emotions
" I think the only difference between me and other people is that when I hear of an interesting historical incident, I immediately write it down and Google it. "
Emma Donoghue
Down
Interesting
Me
" Kids delight in 'magical thinking', whether in the form of the Tooth Fairy or the saints: whether you see these as comforting lies or eternal verities, they are part of how we help kids make sense of the world. "
Emma Donoghue
See
World
Thinking
" I'm constantly saying, 'I read a fascinating article in 'The New Yorker'... ' I say it so often that sometimes I think I have nothing interesting to say myself, I merely regurgitate 'The New Yorker.' "
Emma Donoghue
Interesting
Myself
Say
" 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. "
Emma Donoghue
Lie
Now
Simple
" Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene. "
Emma Donoghue
Chapter
Need
Planning
" You know, plenty of people headed off to Canada or America on the basis of government information, propaganda campaigns. Often you'd go off with a brochure in hand and you'd turn up and it wouldn't be like that at all. "
Emma Donoghue
America
People
Information
" You know the way there are two kinds of actors - the De Niro kind who's always De Niro, and then somebody like Daniel Day-Lewis, who transforms himself eerily? Well, I aim to be the Daniel Day-Lewis kind of writer. I don't have a house style. "
Emma Donoghue
Kind
House
Always