Emma Healey Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Emma Healey Quotes. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!

1
I love writing dialogue – it’s when I really lose myself in my work. I love reading it, too, when it’s good and rings true.
Emma Healey
2
Several members of my family have, or have had, one form of dementia or another. I really wanted to explore what it might like in fiction, but I didn’t know how to start.
Emma Healey
3
I was a 20-something woman living in London and didn’t want to write about a 20-something woman living in London! It’s an area well covered already, and people would probably have thought it was about me. I decided that if I wrote about an 82-year-old dementia sufferer, then no one could mistake it as a memoir.
Emma Healey
4
While I was writing ‘Elizabeth Is Missing’ and struggling with the intricacies of the plot, I told myself the next book would be really simple and linear, and I’d have it all worked out before I set down a single word.
Emma Healey
5
I had so many people in my family with dementia that it felt like it belonged to me in a way. I feel like the same with teenage depression because I went through it. I feel like I’m allowed to write about it; it’s mine.
Emma Healey
6
With novels, you’re representing things. You’re not explaining.
Emma Healey
7
I spend a ridiculous amount on pots, lilacs, and alliums.
Emma Healey
8
I was very worried about whether I could do it or not. I mean, how arrogant – here I am in my 20s trying to write from the point of view of a woman in her 80s.
Emma Healey
9
Mark Haddon’s ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ was published while I was trying to work out how to write ‘Elizabeth Is Missing,’ and reading the story of that impaired amateur detective gave me the licence I needed to attempt one of my own.
Emma Healey
10
When I was writing my first novel, ‘Elizabeth is Missing,’ I was writing the only novel I had ever written and writing about the only protagonist I’d ever written about. Because of this, I didn’t think of her as a construct. Maud was real.
Emma Healey
11
Like most new writers, I could only hope that one day one publisher might agree to publish one of my books; I couldn’t imagine several publishers all wanting to buy the first book I’d written.
Emma Healey
12
I feel like Mills and Boon saved my life. It was a way of not living. I read a lot of other books as well, but they were definitely the best for just switching my brain off, not having to deal with reality.
Emma Healey
13
I had tried to write about young women in London who had jobs and boyfriends, and it was so tedious.
Emma Healey
14
I really admire Ana Mendieta. She was a Cuban American artist who died the year I was born and whose work examines violence, feminism, and belonging. Her art is always brave and visually arresting and vibrates with meaning.
Emma Healey
15
Writing is the thing that pervades my whole day – I’m always wondering how I might describe something or improve my understanding. I’m constantly trying to remember an eavesdropped conversation or an idea for a story.
Emma Healey
16
I think I’m too scatty.
Emma Healey
17
I used to go to the gym with one of my best friends, and we seemed to have the same conversation over and over again. I was always saying, ‘I’m still not pregnant, and I still haven’t worked out what I’m writing,’ and her answer to both was always, ‘Just relax!’
Emma Healey
18
A boyfriend made me a hammock in Richmond Park once. That was lovely – although I ended up getting a tick on my stomach from the deer.
Emma Healey
19
There are lots of things going on for teenagers, with exam stress, changing friendship groups, becoming independent, and all those hormone changes affecting you.
Emma Healey
20
The characters in a novel are made up, figments of the writer’s imagination. I’m sure this won’t come as a surprise to anyone, and it’s not surprising to me either, but knowing this, feeling this, definitely made writing my second book harder.
Emma Healey
21
If you work hard at something, you can forget everything else.
Emma Healey
22
I found ‘The Face Of Another’ by Kobo Abe disappointing despite the excellent, gothic premise: a man who’s terrible facial scarring leads him to create a perfect mask.
Emma Healey
23
It’s a slow process rewriting your own life in your head. I think that’s a writerly thing.
Emma Healey
24
Reading about what a digital native thinks of the Internet is like reading about what it’s like to blink: it’s kind of boring.
Emma Healey
25
I have a study at the back of the house, overlooking our garden. It’s tiny, just wide enough to fit my desk in. The walls are covered with pin boards and art postcards from galleries all over the world, including Tate, MoMA, and Lenbachhaus.
Emma Healey
26
I loved ‘A Lion in the Meadow’ by Margaret Mahy.
Emma Healey
27
I can trace my interest in modern classics to the summer before art college.
Emma Healey
28
Sometimes people ask, ‘If you’d never had a reader, would you carry on writing?’ No.
Emma Healey
29
People always want to give you advice about parenting. People who you’ve never met before will tell you you’re doing something wrong. And it’s quite similar in writing. People forget that you’re a human; they just want to give you their advice.
Emma Healey
30
I spent a lot of time researching dementia, read papers on the subject, and also found a lot of dementia diaries on the Internet which were a great help in getting an insight into the disease.
Emma Healey