A Quote by Emma Donoghue

What writing ROOM taught me was that I know exactly how to be the perfect mother, but I'm not willing to do it for more than ten minutes at a time. — © Emma Donoghue
What writing ROOM taught me was that I know exactly how to be the perfect mother, but I'm not willing to do it for more than ten minutes at a time.
I meditate in the morning, and my daughter will do it with me, looking like the most perfect little Buddha. I'll do ten minutes of yoga, then two to ten minutes of meditation. She'll sit there quietly half the time.
My father probably taught me everything I know, aside from dialogue, which I think I get from my mom a lot more. He certainly didn't teach me everything he knew, but you know he has got this book out called "The Spooky Art," which is essentially an advanced book on writing and it's not... You know it's not ABC, but it's for people who feel that bug and know that they're writers and are willing to put in that time alone. Pretty much the vast majority of what he taught me you can find in that book.
No American can understand the need for time -- that is, simply space to breathe. If you have ten minutes to spare you should jam that full instead of leaving it -- as space around your next ten minutes. How can anything ripen without those 'empty' ten minutes?
I suppose the more you have to do, the more you learn to organize and concentrate-or else get fragmented into bits. I have learned to use my 'ten minutes'. I once thought it was not worth sitting down for a time as short as that; now I know differently and, if I have ten minutes, I use them, even if they bring only two lines, and it keeps the book alive.
My mother at a young age put me in bilingual, so my strength is really more in Spanish. Even though I live and I was born and raised in the States, you know, in the Bronx, in Spanish I get my point across. And when I'm writing music, when I'm doing music, it's easier for me, and I know exactly how to express myself.
I started writing when I had three kids under the age of 4. I used to write every ten minutes I got to sit in front of a computer. Now, when I have more time, I function the same way: if it's writing time, I write.
My first match was against Sputnik Monroe at the Amarillo Sports Arena. It was scheduled for only ten minutes. Sputnik got me down and was on top of me for the first eight minutes. My father came running down to the ring and yelled for me to get up. I don't know how I got up but I did. I was a lot more scared of my father than I was Sputnik.
Praise and criticism seem to me to operate exactly on the same level. If you get a great review, it's really thrilling for about ten minutes. If you get a bad review, it's really crushing for ten minutes. Either way, you go on.
After a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end. Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.
The last great unknown, in terms of physiological training, is the optimum length of a piece. Is three minutes enough? Is ten minutes too much? No one knows. Perhaps someday the question will be answered-we'll find out that thirteen minutes is the perfect length for a training piece when preparing for a 2000 meter race. Until then, coaches will continue exploring the whole scale, up and down, from thirty seconds to sixty minutes and more, in hopes of capturing the optimum time.
There is more good writing and good acting in any ten minutes of Twister than in, say, all of Citizen Kane.
Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow.
Nothing bores me more than books where you read two pages and you know exactly how it's going to come out. I want twists and turns that surprise me, characters that have a difficult time and that I don't know if they're going to live or die.
I have seen God do more in people's lives during ten minutes of real prayer than in ten of my sermons.
Most of the comics that I talk to I've never talked to for more than ten minutes ever. So 95 percent of the time you're really hearing the first conversation between me and that guy on the podcast.
For Africa to me... is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.
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