Emma Donoghue Quotes

People don't always want to be with people. It gets tiring.

~ Emma Donoghue

Everybody's damaged by something.

~ Emma Donoghue

If I was made of cake I'd eat myself before somebody else could.

~ Emma Donoghue

For some people, she thought, trials were only temporary; they sailed towards happiness through the roughest weather.

~ Emma Donoghue

It came to Mary now that her mother had been right, after all; Mary had been born for this. In sixteen years she'd shot along the shortest route she could find between life and death, as the crow flew.

~ Emma Donoghue

The worn soles of Daffy's boots skidded on the icy stones. He'd been saving up for a new pair for Christmas, but then he'd come across an encyclopaedia in ten volumes, going cheap. Boots might last ten years, at best, but knowledge was eternal.

~ Emma Donoghue

... where there's one there's ten.'That's crazy math.

~ Emma Donoghue

For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

~ Emma Donoghue

Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.

~ Emma Donoghue

People move around so much in the world, things get lost.

~ Emma Donoghue

And why must it always be presumed that a woman's views are based on personal considerations?

~ Emma Donoghue

Men never feel quite the same about a woman's body once they know it's done that thing: widened and torn to push out a baby's head.

~ Emma Donoghue

The crow flew closer, as if to hear its praises.

~ Emma Donoghue

Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.

~ Emma Donoghue

The sound of the pages turning was the sound of magic. The dry liquid feel of paper under fingertips was what magic felt like.

~ Emma Donoghue

In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time. Even Grandma often says that, but she and Steppa don't have jobs, so I don't know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well. In Room me and Ma had time for everything. I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter over all the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there's only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit.Also everywhere I'm looking at kids, adults mostly don't seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the things all over again so they can take a photo, but they don't want to actually play with them, they'd rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there's a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn't even hear.

~ Emma Donoghue

Stories are a different kind of true.

~ Emma Donoghue

...real loneliness is having no one to miss. Think yourself lucky you've known something worth missing.

~ Emma Donoghue

It was the word 'late' that did it. Such a stupid word to use of the dead, implying that they would be with us today if they hadn't happened to be delayed in traffic somewhere...

~ Emma Donoghue

Jo claimed that the reason people survived breakups was that within days of the amputation, Mother Nature started reminding you of what you had been doing without, what could have been better, all the samll discontents you had been filing away.

~ Emma Donoghue

And it did me no good to recall particular conversations (if indeed these were particular conversations I was remembering so vividly, rather than inventions of my uneasy brain). Remembering clarified nothing.

~ Emma Donoghue

In the days when wishing was having, I got what I wished and then I wish I hadn't.

~ Emma Donoghue

I think she was too tired to play anymore, she was in a hurry to get to Heaven so she didn't wait, why didn't she wait for me?

~ Emma Donoghue

Maybe I’m a human, but I’m a me-and-Ma as well.

~ Emma Donoghue

Everyone's got a different story.

~ Emma Donoghue

This is a bad story.”“Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”“No, you should,” I say.“But—”“I don’t want there to be bad stories and me not know them.

~ Emma Donoghue

Outside has everything. Whenever I think of a thing now like skis or fireworks or islands or elevators or yo-yos, I have to remember they're real, they're actually happening in Outside all together. It makes my head tired. And people too, firefighters teachers burglars babies saints soccer players and all sorts, they're all really in Outside. I'm not there, though, me and Ma, we're the only ones not there. Are we still real?

~ Emma Donoghue

...everyone goes home in the end.

~ Emma Donoghue

Nowadays 'invisibility' was supposed to be the big problem, but the way I saw it was, all that mattered was to be visible to yourself.

~ Emma Donoghue

I may have had moments of regret in my life, but you know, they wouldn't add up to an hour.

~ Emma Donoghue

Keep your heart infinitesimally small and sorrow will never spy it, never plunge, never flap away with your heart in her claws.

~ Emma Donoghue

You know who you belong to, Jack?”“Yeah.”“Yourself.”He’s wrong, actually, I belong to Ma.

~ Emma Donoghue

[E]verywhere I'm looking at kids, adults mostly don't seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don't want to actually play with them, they'd rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there's a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn't even hear.

~ Emma Donoghue

That's what you got for being a servant of no ambition: a shrunken life, hung up like a gibbet as a warning to others.

~ Emma Donoghue

A lot of the world seems to repeat itself

~ Emma Donoghue

In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time. Even Grandma often says that, but she and Steppa don't have jobs, so I don't know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well. In Room me and Ma had time for everything. I guess the time gets spread very thing like butter over all the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there's only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit.

~ Emma Donoghue

And tonight Mary could taste bitterness going down like a nut, settling in her stomach. It planted itself, put down roots, and began to grow, nourished on her dark blood.

~ Emma Donoghue

Sometimes you must shed your skin to save it.

~ Emma Donoghue

Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?Steppa laughs. Folks with other things to do?Like what things?Jobs, I guess. Friends. Trips. Hobbies.

~ Emma Donoghue

I tend to be so lost in the work that I don't notice the weather. My partner will come home and say, 'Beautiful day, wasn't it?' and I'll say, 'Was it?' as I won't have noticed the real world at all.

~ Emma Donoghue