Roddy Doyle Quotes

I tend to plan as I write. And I want to leave myself open and the character open to keep on going until it seems to be the time to stop.

I swooned the first time I saw Charlo. I actually did. I didn't faint or fall on the floor but my legs went rubbery on me and I giggled. I suddenly knew that I had lungs because they were empty and collapsing.

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.

It's hard for me to measure them, or to assess my books because I'm so close to them.

To claim that music is more important than oxygen would be trite and sentimental. It would also be true.

I jumped on Sinbad's bottle. Nothing happened. I didn't do it again. Sometimes when nothing happened it was really getting ready to happen

Do ghosts drink tea?
They don't, said Tansey. But this ghost would love to see a cup of tea in front of her. It'd be lovely.

The problem with being Irish ... is having 'Riverdance' on your back. It's a burden at times.

When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write, I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.'

Good ideas are often murdered by better ones.

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.

Gloria screamed, but nothing came out. She could feel the scream in her throat, but it was clinging there, too scared to climb out of her mouth.
Raymond might have screamed, too
he wasn't sure. His face was an exploding red ball
that was what it felt like. His heart was in the middle of his head. He couldn't see a thing.

And even the aches and pains that had joined her as she got older
she'd liked them. They were reminders
the back, the knee, the achy wrists
they were even friends: Feel that now, Emer. You're alive.

Fuck was the best word. The most dangerous word. You couldn't whisper it. Fuck was always too loud, too late to stop it, it burst in the air above you and fell slowly right over your head. There was total silence, nothing but Fuck floating down. For a few seconds you were dead, waiting for Henno to look up and see Fuck landing on top of you. They were thrilling seconds-when he didn't look up. It was a word you couldn't say anywhere. It wouldn't come out unless you pushed it. It made you feel caught and grabbed you the minute you said it. When it escaped it was like an electric laugh, a soundless gasp followed by the kind of laughing only forbidden things could make, an inside tickle that became a brilliant pain, bashing at your mouth to be let out. It was agony. We didn't waste it.

- Brother Jimmy, said Joey the Lips. - I'm worried. - About Dean.

- Wha' abou' Dean?

- He told me he's been listening to jazz.

- What's wrong with tha'? Jimmy wanted to know.

- Everything, said Joey the Lips. - Jazz is the antithesis of soul.

- I beg your fuckin' pardon!

- I'll go along with Joey there, said Mickah.

- See, said Joey the Lips. - Soul is the people's music. Ordinary people making music for ordinary people. - Simple music. Any Brother can play it. The Motown sound, it's simple. Thump-thump-thump-thump. - That's straight time. Thump-thump-thump-thump. - See? Soul is democratic, Jimmy. Anyone with a bin lid can play it. - It's the people's music.

- Yeh don't need anny honours in your Inter to play soul, isn't tha' wha' you're gettin' at, Joey?

- That's right, brother Michael.

- Mickah.

- Brother Mickah. That's right. You don't need a doctorate to be a doctor of soul.

- Nice one.

- An' what's wrong with jazz? Jimmy asked.

- Intellectual music, said Joey the Lips. - It's anti-people music. It's abstract.

- It's cold an' emotionless, amn't I righ'? said Mickah.

- You are. - It's got no soul. It is sound for the sake of sound. It has no meaning. - It's musical wanking, Brother.

- Musical wankin', said Mickah. - That's good.

- Here, yeh could play tha' at t

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.

When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.

Most working days I can be at my desk for nine hours a day.

We'll cry," she said. "An then we'll stop. Because it's only a house.

Schools don't really allow failure and yet it's part of any endeavour, not just writing.

She'd tried her hand at most things, but drew the line at honesty.

He loved me and he beat me. I loved him and I took it. It's as simple as that, and as stupid and complicated. It's terrible. It's like knowing someone you love is dead but not having the body to prove it. He loved me. I know it.

Her granny was asleep and Mary knew it was special, this trip. It was something that hadn't been planned. It was actually impossible. Four generations of women
"I'm a woman," Mary said to herself
heading off on a journey in a car. One of them dead, one of them dying, one of them driving, one of them just starting out.

We parked our bikes on verges so they could graze.

Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made sense forever ...

I see people in terms of dialogue and I believe that people are their talk.

I had to make sure I kept an eye on the real world.

Terror. That was it.

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, 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.

The best way to reveal a character is to get them to open their mouths.

It's great meeting children because you never know what they will say.

It was a sign of growing up, when the dark made no more difference to you than the day.

The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads.

I cried, a bit, as a spoke to Belinda on my mobile phone, in a quiet corner, perhaps the only quiet corner in Jaipur. I told her how I'd hoped Paul would read the forward, that he'd read how much I admired his work and how much I admired him, how much I just plain liked him and loved him. But, even as I spoke, I knew: Paul had always known that. He'd seen in on my face every time we met. What made me cry was the obvious, stupid fact that we'd never meet again.

I was the ref. I was the ref they didn't know about. Deaf and dumb. Invisible as a wall. I wanted no one to win

They were joking, but it was a serious conversation. They were often like that, Mary and her granny, when they were alone together.

She was in the book again and, by the time she got to page-turning time again, she'd forgetting I was there.

My novels come from within me; they are things I feel I want to do.

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.

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.

It was frightening, though, how little time you got. You only became yourself when you were twenty-three or twenty-four. A few years later, you had an old man's chest hair. It wasn't worth it.

My parents were sixty years married.

I do enjoy Gothic fiction or books about zombies if they are well written and I like vampires.

I knew all the books in the house. I knew their shapes and smells. I knew what pages would open if I held them with the spine on the ground and let the sides drop. I knew all the books but I couldn't remember the name of the one on my head.

When I was growing up, the exam system didn't allow you to write fiction, so you never did.

Ulysses could have done with a good editor. 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.

Four generations of women
"I'm a woman," Mary said to herself
heading off on a journey in a car. One of the dead, one of them dying, one of the driving, one of them just staring out.