Damian Barr Quotes

• You don't realise how much you're holding onto until you start to let go of it. I had had loads of therapy and thought I had come to terms with who I am, but there's something in the process of writing that unlocks other experiences, other emotions and you have to be prepared for that.

  Damian Barr

  Letting Go, Writing, Who I Am

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Memory implies that there is some static time and place you can go back to, whereas if you relive it by trying to put yourself back in that context, its more nuanced, less black and white. More traumatic, but also more exciting. When I knew I had to write about things that would be painful, I put off doing it for ages. But then eventually the fear of not doing it becomes greater than the fear of doing it.

  Damian Barr

  Memories, Writing, Black And White

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I could never do just one thing, but everything I do is in the direction of stories. Sometimes writing them, sometimes showcasing them, sometimes letting people see them.

  Damian Barr

  Writing, People, Stories

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I think the secret of memoirs is keeping those parts of yourself off the page, which makes what you do share more valuable.

  Damian Barr

  Thinking, Secret, Share

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I am a gay writer, but I am also a Scottish writer and some days a lazy writer, or a funny writer. Being gay is just a part of who I am.

  Damian Barr

  Gay, Who I Am, Lazy

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• If you are a Scot living outside of Scotland but still in the UK, you are not allowed to vote in the referendum. This leaves over a million of loyal, proud Scots disenfranchised. It gives me the rage.

  Damian Barr

  Scotland, Giving, Loyal

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Scotland has always been independent. We have our own legal system, our own culture; I don't see the issue. We are different and I think we should celebrate those differences within the union. I can see what would be lost, but don't necessarily see what would be gained by breaking away. What does upset me is that I can't vote in Scotland.

  Damian Barr

  Independent, Thinking, Scotland

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I started writing when I was a journalist. But every time I sat down to write a novel or a story, I ended up writing about myself, which was incredibly annoying and self-involved.

  Damian Barr

  Writing, Self, Stories

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are very often not really what happened. And as I started to write stuff down, I started to challenge what I thought I knew about myself, my culture, my family, all of it. It was a huge, destroying process that completely took over my life. I just wasn't here, I mean I was physically present, but I wasn't here, I was back in the 1980s.

  Damian Barr

  Writing, Mean, Challenges

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I had to do things to myself on the page that had been done to me in real life. I had to try and drown myself in the bath. You have to do that. And the impulse is to rescue yourself and to spare the reader, but I can't rescue myself. And why should I spare the reader when nobody spared me? It's telling people what happened.

  Damian Barr

  Real, People, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I cut a lot of cringy sex stuff and a lot of stuff I thought was too personal. I think secret gardens are very special. I think we all have to have them. I think the secret of memoirs is keeping those parts of yourself off the page, which makes what you do share more valuable.

  Damian Barr

  Sex, Cutting, Garden

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Because I work at other things, whenever I get a chance to write I feel grateful for it. But I learned that sometimes, I couldn't do anything else and I shouldn't plan to do anything that night or the next day. There were times when I was writing something difficult for days or weeks and when I'd finish, I would get up and go out of my shed into the garden and be sick. I had terrible migraines.

  Damian Barr

  Grateful, Writing, Night

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I do feel a responsibility. It's a privilege to be able to speak about it, but I don't speak for all gay people.

  Damian Barr

  Responsibility, Gay, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The hardest bits of my book to read were the easiest bits to write because they were the most immediate. Probably because I had never stopped thinking about them on some level. Those bits I was just channelling and those were the most exciting writing days. The bits I found harder were the bits that happen in between, you know, the rest of living. There were whole years, whole houses, that I just got rid of.

  Damian Barr

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I went through in the edits and cut tons of stuff that was "funny" because if it wasn't funny at the time, so it shouldn't be funny now. It's about having that unity of experience. You have to try and take away your hindsight knowledge of a situation.

  Damian Barr

  Cutting, Unity, Trying

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

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