Top 20 Emma Donoghue Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Emma Donoghue Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

Ah yes, the paradox of publicity is that even as we do

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
I come out of an academic background, and I’m aware that what I’m doing is simultaneously research and fiction. I want to meet both those obligations.
Emma Donoghue
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I remember a period where my publisher said to me, ‘Look, your historical work is selling much better than your contemporary work, so please give us more historicals.’
Emma Donoghue
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
I think it would be a shame for any writer to let their publishers in any way corral them into a single genre.
Emma Donoghue
Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up.
Emma Donoghue
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
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
I hate desks; they make me feel like a child doing homework.
Emma Donoghue
I’ve always been religiously inclined, but it doesn’t come up in most of my books.
Emma Donoghue
I’m a huge planner, more and more so as the years go by.
Emma Donoghue
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