Roddy Doyle

“Sometimes adults seem as though they have cut a chord from being a child.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“She’s happier than Nicola. That’s probably true. Alcoholics can stop drinking but what is there for the children of alcoholics? Is it always too late? Probably. She doesn’t know.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“I wouldn't go out of my way to experience the indignity of middle-age just because it might be good meat for a story.”

“When you grow up on an island, what matters is how you stand to the sea.”

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

“Good ideas are often murdered by better ones.”

“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.”

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

“My parents were sixty years married.”

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