Emma Donoghue Quotes

If you put your personal stories out there people always connect.

I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

All my life I've been interested in other people's stories. I wanted to know them, understand them, feel them.

You can't write something actively trying to please everyone - you're going to end up with watery soup that way. You just have to write stories you would want to read and hope that people like them.

I've come to realize that people connect more when they know you're telling them the truth or some aspect of your story, some mutated version of how you are experiencing this life.

It's extremely important for women to be writing their own stories and giving them to people to really be emotionally impacted by

Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we write the story we need to write, they read the story they need to read.

You could omit anything if you knew that the omitted part would strengthen the short story and make people feel something more than they understood

Stories are more than compelling facts. People remember stories more than they remember statistics.

With a novel, you have to have a story. It's much more important to have it matter to the reader what happens to people, and it has to make sense and end in a way that is satisfying. So I spend a lot more time thinking about that. Then the writing itself usually is easier for me, because I know where it's going.

I write what needs to be written the way that seems genuinely right. If what comes out of it are stories, then it is my vocation to believe in them and in the fact that they'll interest people and maybe affect their lives.

All you can do is show people...You tell stories that are true and compelling.

I love sitting down with my friends at dinner and actually telling them a story, as opposed to going, "Hey, did you see that thing I posted on Instagram?" For me, I would so much rather sit there and actually share a story with somebody and have somebody tell me about their trip, or things like that. I don't need to see it.

I didn't want to just write stories that were entertaining. Nor did I want to be so scholarly that people couldn't digest it.

Stories turn anonymous strangers into people who matter.

I want my stories to move people ... to feel some kind of reward from the writing.

When I discovered that I could write music, it felt like the most natural way for me to connect with people and tell my stories. I've always thought of that as what I do: I tell stories.

I'm much more into someone who is telling stories than somebody who is writing a record about their breakup. It's just more interesting for me.

Most people can start a short story or a novel. If you're a writer, you can finish them. Finish enough of them, and you may be good enough to be publishable.

I want people to feel that they've gotten to know the people in the film a little bit, gotten to see Pine Ridge in ways they haven't seen before. I think that's a good start.

That’s how people live, by telling stories. What’s the first thing a kid says when he learns how to talk? “Tell me a story.” That’s how we understand who we are, where we come from. Stories are everything.

...I can write my own stories and I can write myself in.

I think you have to have a personal connection, and that's what I am always looking to try to create: a personal way in to a story.

It's fun to write about myself, but I feel like I would bore people with that.

I usually start writing stories from tone and not from content - kind of like people who create music and invent the lyrics later on.