Quotes from Roddy Doyle

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

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

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

If there is a heaven, Jane Austen is sitting in a small room with Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, listening to Duran Duran, forever. If there's a hell, she's standing.

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

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.

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

I told Myles Bradley quite clearly that I'd been molested. But I'd kept talking. I should have stopped after I'd told him about the man's weight holding me down. I didn't exactly bury the story Ã¢â'¬â€œ my story Ã¢â'¬â€œ but I made it, somehow, an expected part of every Irishman's education. A bit of gas. Not so bad. Part of what we are.

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

They'd had a fight again. – You'll have your work cut out for you, I said. One of their quiet ones. She laughed. Where they whispered their screams and roaring. She laughed at me. And she was always the first one to cry and he kept stabbing at her with his face and his words.

Jesus, she said. -Are you in there at all? -I am, Annie, I told her. -Bursting to get out.

Only once, I told them. It had happened only once. That was true. But it came back more than once, after that first time. Whatever it was. The Drop. That was what I named it. —The Drop? Rachel would ask. Always at night. Always lying down. Only in the loft. Only in those two years. She liked the name. It did the trick, caged it, made it comical.

Why the loft? Why only there, and only then? Now Ã¢â'¬â€œ today Ã¢â'¬â€œ I think it was because I was happy. I didn't think that then. I couldn't have. I didn't know I was happy and I didn't know that happiness was finite.

It often seemed that the trees were flu of people whispering--especially tonight.

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

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.

I see people walking, he said.—Just during the day, like. I see them and they all seem to know where they're going. And I always think they're keeping the secret from me. Where they're going Ã¢â'¬â€œ where they know they're going. I've always felt that. Left out, I suppose. Excluded

They didn't understand. They didn't understand that robbing had nothing to do with what we wanted; it was the dare, the terror, the getting away with 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.

They were our friends because we hated them; it was good to have them around. I was cleaner than them, brainier than them. I was better than them.

Terror. That was it.

The family trees of the poor don't grow to any height.

It's gas but, isn't it? How we get suckered in. Some prick in a white coat says if you eat all o' your peas Gina Lollobrigida will sit on your face.

I'd made a girl laugh and touch my arm when I'd told her that I was thinking of rewriting it as a musical after the finals. But I couldn't look at her while I spoke. I could look at her, briefly, and say nothing. Or I could make her laugh while I looked over her shoulder or at a wall. I couldn't do both. But I could write.