Roddy Doyle Quotes

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Roddy Doyle

Profession : Novelist

Birth : May 8, 1958

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.'

Roddy Doyle

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.

Roddy Doyle

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.

Roddy Doyle

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

Roddy Doyle

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

Roddy Doyle

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

Roddy Doyle

I'm going to sound like an old man but at my age, it's lovely doing something that you've never done before.

Roddy Doyle

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.

Roddy Doyle

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.

Roddy Doyle

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

Roddy Doyle

I don't work to any commissions. I do what I want to do.

Roddy Doyle

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

Roddy Doyle

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.

Roddy Doyle

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

Roddy Doyle

I've been asked why does Ireland produce so many great musicians, and the answer is it doesn't. When you count the great musicians Ireland has given the world in the last 20 years, you can do it on one hand.

Roddy Doyle

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

Roddy Doyle

I like naming characters.

Roddy Doyle

Some of the people who look the most normal are probably the maddest people trying to look normal.

Roddy Doyle

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

Roddy Doyle

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

Roddy Doyle