89 Quotes by Roddy Doyle

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.

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.

It was the secrecy I hated. but. Like we were ashamed. Cos we weren't - not really. It was like we were breakin' the law, an' I'm not even sure we were. Just cause we loved our child. - But it worked out okay, yeah?- Yeah, but it was wrong smuggling her o' the country.- You'll be voting yes, so? - I'll be waitin' for the fucking doors to open.

There were days when I didn't exist; he saw through me and walked around me. I was invisible. There were days when I liked not existing. I closed down, stopped thinking, stopped looking...There were days when I couldn't even feel pain. They were the best ones. I could see it happening. There was no ground under me, nothing to fall to. I was able to not care. I could float. I didn't exist

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.

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

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.

When you are writing for fiction everything is in each word and each individual word is a literary decision, whereas if you are writing for the screen and you have a character walking into a room it is because she walks into the room: it doesn't matter if it isn't glorious literature.

If you're a writer in Dublin and you write a snatch of dialogue, everyone thinks you lifted it from Joyce. The whole idea that he owns language as it is spoken in Dublin is a nonsense. He didn't invent the Dublin accent. It's as if you're encroaching on his area or it's a given that he's on your shoulder. It gets on my nerves.