Donoghue Emma Quotes & Sayings

Something we do know is that review coverage does go to male authors more than women authors. That's a fact. I think it's one of those examples of unconscious bias: If you hire a lot of male journalists, they're more likely to pick up the latest Ian McEwan novel than the latest A.S. Byatt novel. — Emma Donoghue

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

thinks now. And sometimes, Little One. It's quite mysterious to — Emma Donoghue

Maybe I'm a human, but I'm a me-and-Ma as well. — Emma Donoghue

But I go back down near the water with Steppa to look for treasure. We find a white shell like a snail, but when I curl my finger inside, he's gone out. "Keep it," say Steppa. "But what about when he comes home? — Emma Donoghue

Daughter, he said in a voice like old wood breaking, can you ever forgive me?
I could only answer his question with one of my own. Putting my hand over his mouth, I whispered, Which of us would not sell all we had to stay alive? — Emma Donoghue

The Collector [John Fowles book] does such a good job of capturing the mindset of a capturer, and also that's become a banal trope of every second crime novel: the weirdo, fetishistic watcher/stalker/kidnapper/kidnapper of women or children. — Emma Donoghue

The days of my vanity are over and heaven knows they weren't happy enough to regret — Emma Donoghue

So when one spring in spite of all this good advice I fell in love, it felt like disaster. I took a tiny bite and it exploded in my stomach. Love splashed through every cranny, hauled on every muscle, unlocked every joint. I was so full of astonishment, I felt ten feet tall. My shoulders itched as if wings might break through. — Emma Donoghue

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

I'm really aware that in fiction, women are pretty much equal. There's a lot of very successful women novelists. Not so much [for women writers working] in film. — Emma Donoghue

Don't worry about it. She keeps saying that but I don't know to not worry. I — Emma Donoghue

... where there's one there's ten.'
That's crazy math. — Emma Donoghue

Ambition was an itch in Mary's show, a maggot in her guts. — Emma Donoghue

Now I feel bad I didn't give her the second quarter. Grandma says that's called having a conscience. — Emma Donoghue

Daffy bent down suddenly, and picked a small startled white flower. "Anemone," he said, handing it over; he made her repeat the word until she had it right. "Find me a silk to match that. — Emma Donoghue

I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way. — Emma Donoghue

Me and Ma have a deal, we're going to try everything one time so we know what we like. — Emma Donoghue

In my experience of ward nursing, two shifts are more conducive to sleep than three." "But — Emma Donoghue

Kids delight in 'magical thinking', whether in the form of the Tooth Fairy or the saints: whether you see these as comforting lies or eternal verities, they are part of how we help kids make sense of the world. — Emma Donoghue

Writing stories is my way of scratching that itch: my escape from the claustrophobia of individuality. It lets me, at least for a while, live more than one life, walk more than one path. Reading, of course, can do the same. — Emma Donoghue

...everyone goes home in the end. — Emma Donoghue

Coffee's the most important thing they sell because most of us need it to keep us going, like gas in the car. — Emma Donoghue

Every parent has those moments where they look at their child and think, 'There's a demon in those eyes and no one can see it but me!' — Emma Donoghue

I've been in a long and happy relationship for 22 years and it's never inspired me to write anything. It's too good - nothing to say. Problems, conflict, that's what makes for good stories. — Emma Donoghue

When I tell her what I'm thinking and she tells me what she's thinking, our each ideas jumping into the other's head, like coulouring blue crayon on top of yellow that makes green. — Emma Donoghue

Seriously, I think what all the puzzling over parenthood I had to do to write [a novel]ROOM taught me is that children can thrive in a remarkable range of situations. — Emma Donoghue

Actually, Saint Peter was in jail, one time
"
I laugh. "Babies don't go in jail."
"This happened when they were all grown up."
I didn't know Baby Jesus grows up. — Emma Donoghue

A lot of the world seems to repeat itself — 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

Today is one of the days when Ma is Gone.
She won't wake up properly. She's here but not really. She stays in Bed with the pillows on her head.
Silly Penis is standing up, I squish him down.
I eat my hundred cereal and I stand on my chair to wash the bowl and Meltedy Spoon. It's very quiet when I switch off the water. I wonder did Old Nick come in the night. I don't think he did because the trash bag is still by Door, but maybe he did only he didn't take the trash? Maybe Ma's not just Gone. Maybe he squished her neck even harder and now she's -
I go up really close and listen till I hear breath. I'm just one inch away, my hair touches Ma's nose and she puts her hand up over her face so I step back.
I don't have a bath on my own, I just get dressed.
There's hours and hours, hundreds of them.
Ma gets up to pee but not talking, with her face all blank. I already put a glass of water beside Bed but she just gets back under Duvet. — 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

Books are the air I breathe, so I don't notice the seasons. — Emma Donoghue

There's no neutral language about travel. Either travel is described in ways that make it sound kind of shallow or just glossy or silly or a way for rich people to spend their time; or else travel is often described in quite derogatory ways, you know, like immigrants swarming across borders, for instance. — Emma Donoghue

Driving home I see the playground but it's all wrong, the swings are on the opposite side. "Oh, Jack, that's a different one," says Grandma. There's playgrounds in every town." Lots of the world seems to be a repeat. — Emma Donoghue

I have tried to use memory and invention together, like two hands engaged in the same muddy work of digging up the past. — Emma Donoghue

Alice says she can't explain herself because she's not herself, she knows who she was this morning but she changed several times since then. — Emma Donoghue

She was with Jude so rarely that when she was, every cell of her body rang with grateful knowledge of it. — Emma Donoghue

The latest gorgeous entry in the Belknap Press' growing library of annotated Jane Austen novels arrives, this time the mighty Emma under the exactingly careful guidance of Bharat Tandon of the University of East Anglia. Belknap has once again done its end of the job superbly: the book is a physical treat-luxuriantly over-sized, heavy with quality paper and solid binding, decked out in a beautiful cover and dozens of well-chosen illustrations throughout. This is one of the prettiest Jane Austen volumes available in bookstoresthis season. — Steve Donoghue

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

We go in a skyscraper that's Paul's office, he says he's crazy busy but he makes a Xerox of my hands and buys me a candy bar out of the vending machine. Going down in the elevator pressing the buttons, I play I'm actually inside a vending machine. We go in a bit of the government to get Grandma a new Social Security card because she lost the old one, we have to wait for years and years. Afterwards she takes me in a coffee shop where there's no green beans, I choose a cookie bigger than my face. — Emma Donoghue

I chop the broccoli into pieces with ZigZag Knife, sometimes I swallow some when Ma's not looking and she says, "Oh, no, where's that big bit gone?" but she's not really mad because raw things make us extra alive. — Emma Donoghue

Perhaps we get, not what we deserve, but what we demand. — Emma Donoghue

You know the way there are two kinds of actors - the De Niro kind who's always De Niro, and then somebody like Daniel Day-Lewis, who transforms himself eerily? Well, I aim to be the Daniel Day-Lewis kind of writer. I don't have a house style. — Emma Donoghue

I've seen the world and I'm tired now. — Emma Donoghue

People have no idea of the things that don't happen to them - the lives they're not living, the deaths stalking them - and thank Christ for that. Hard enough to get through each day without glimpsing all the hovering possibilities, like insects thickening the air. — Emma Donoghue

Ma's in Room still, I want her here so much much much. — Emma Donoghue

Careful. Why do persons only say that after the hurt? — Emma Donoghue

When I was four I was watching ants walking up Stove and she ran and splatted them all so they wouldn't eat our food. One minute they were alive and the next minute they were dirt. I cried so my eyes nearly melted off. — Emma Donoghue

taking the killers, always two at night because she says pain is like water, it spreads out as soon as she lies down. She — Emma Donoghue

It's you that matters though, just you. — Emma Donoghue

I am clumsy, a late and nervous driver, and despise all sports except a little gentle dancing or yoga. — Emma Donoghue

You must feel an almost pathological need - understandably - to stand guard between your son and the world." "Yeah, it's called being a mother." Ma nearly snarls it. — 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

I'm constantly saying, 'I read a fascinating article in 'The New Yorker' ... ' I say it so often that sometimes I think I have nothing interesting to say myself, I merely regurgitate 'The New Yorker.' — Emma Donoghue

I watch his hands, they're lumpy but clever. "Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?"
Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do? — 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

Once I spent a whole day there, a blade of grass in each hand to anchor me to the warm earth.
I watched the sun rise, pass over my head and set. Ladybirds mated on my knuckle; a shrew nibbled a hole in my stocking while I tried not to laugh. Such a day was worth any punishment. — Emma Donoghue

I actually tried to think of the story [Room] in gender-neutral terms at first and said to myself, "OK, would this work if it were a man?" Well no, you can't make a man pregnant, so it's got to be a woman. — Emma Donoghue

Ma's still nodding. "You're the one who matters, though. Just you."
I shake my head till it's wobbling because there's no just me. — Emma Donoghue

But what on earth had possessed her, to take a wagon this far beyond nowhere? When — Emma Donoghue

Houses are like lots of Rooms stuck together, TV persons stay in them mostly but sometimes they go in their outsides and weather happens to them. — Emma Donoghue

One thing I like about historical fiction is that I'm not constantly focusing on me, or people like me; you're obliged to concentrate on lives that are completely other than your own. — Emma Donoghue

You cannot predict literary success; the only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well. — Emma Donoghue

A strident female voice causes men's ears to close. — Emma Donoghue

Before I had kids, I thought you should never lie to a kid. But now I've had them, I realize you almost lie to them by definition, because if you're trying to summarize something for your 1-year-old, you put it in very simple terms. You only gradually complicate the explanation as they get older. — Emma Donoghue

All this reverential - I'm not a saint." Ma's voice is getting loud again. "I wish people would stop treating us like we're the only ones who ever lived through something terrible. I've been finding stuff on the Internet you wouldn't believe. — Emma Donoghue

You know, plenty of people headed off to Canada or America on the basis of government information, propaganda campaigns. Often you'd go off with a brochure in hand and you'd turn up and it wouldn't be like that at all. — Emma Donoghue

Sometimes when persons say definitely it sounds actually less true. — Emma Donoghue

She leaped into space, high, higher than she'd ever been in her life. She came down with a clean snap, and the crowd scattered like birds from the swing of her feet. — Emma Donoghue

The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side. — Emma Donoghue

I've been in the world three weeks and a half, I still never know what's going to hurt. — 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

Unknown Assassin, says the headline. Blanche skips over the details she already knows. How bizarre to see what she lived through last night turned into an item tucked between stock prices and Crazy Horse whupping the army at Little Bighorn. — Emma Donoghue

When I was four I thought everything in TV was just TV, then I was five and Ma unlied about lots of it being pictures of real and Outside being totally real. Now I'm in Outside but it turns out lots of it isn't real at all. — Emma Donoghue

It occurs to Blanche that English doesn't have French's useful distinction between libre, meaning that something's unconstrained, and gratuit, meaning that it costs nothing. Free thought, free speech, free love: the English word that Arthur was so fond of obscures the price of things. — Emma Donoghue

Happiness as un-pin-downable as a louse: you feel the tickle of its passage but your fingers close on nothing. — Emma Donoghue

I wrote the novel [Room], and then I thought, "This could work on film, and I want to be the one to do it." So I went ahead and drafted it. — Emma Donoghue

I'm named after Jane Austen's Emma, and I've always been able to relate to her. She's strong, confident but quite tactless. — Emma Donoghue

I remember a period where my publisher said to me, 'Look, your historical work is selling much better than your contemporary work, so please give us more historicals.' — Emma Donoghue

Their next reunion shifted like an oasis on the horizon, and Jude couldn't plot her course. She trudged through her days, haunted by the feeling that real life was happening five thousand kilometers away. — Emma Donoghue

One of them asked what was in my skirts to make them so heavy, and I said, Knives, and he took his hand off my thigh and never touched me again. — Emma Donoghue

In the yard of the inn, Daffy Cadwaladyr introduced himself. "Short for Davyd," he said pleasantly.
The Londoner looked as if she'd never heard a sillier name in her life. — Emma Donoghue

When people write to me with stories, they are never ones that work for me. There's something mysterious about which ones catch you. — Emma Donoghue

I read a lot of social history. If I'm in an art gallery and a picture intrigues me, I immediately write down the title and I google it. I do a lot of googling and looking out for good stories. I can almost smell them sometimes. — Emma Donoghue

Yeah, but for me, see, Jack was everything. I was alive again, I mattered. So after that I was polite." "Polite? Oh, you mean with - " "It was all about keeping Jack safe." "Was it agonizingly hard to be, as you put it, polite?" Ma shakes her head. "I did it on autopilot, you know, Stepford Wife." The — Emma Donoghue

Well, they don't make their music just to pass the time," says Jenny, grinning. "Got to want something to sing about it, no? — Emma Donoghue

Daffy had stopped talking, without her noticing. It was if he'd run out of words. He did a peculiar thing, then; he reached out and touched Mary's cheekbone; lightly, as if he was brushing away a speck of coal dust. She thought of Doll, that first morning, wiping mud out of the lost child's eyes. Her throat hurt, all at once, as if she were swallowing a stone. She wished the two of them could stay forever frozen in this moment, hidden in the grass, as the setting sun slid across the fields of Monmouth. Before any asking, any refusal. While this strange, tame young man was still looking at her as is she were worth any price. — Emma Donoghue

I've always been religiously inclined, but it doesn't come up in most of my books. — Emma Donoghue

And as the years flowed by, some villagers told travelers of a beast and a beauty who lived in the castle and could be seen walking on the battlements, and others told of two beauties, and others, of two beasts. — 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

You must have been tortured by the memory of everything Jack didn't even know to want. Friends, school, grass, swimming, rides at the fair ... " "Why does everyone go on about fairs?" Ma's voice is all hoarse. "When I was a kid I hated fairs." The woman does a little laugh. Ma — Emma Donoghue

Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up. — Emma Donoghue

There may be certain genres that men dominate, but fiction not so much. The question of prizes is tricky because there are so many prizes. — Emma Donoghue

I've been writing full-time since I was 23. — Emma Donoghue

I needed to do a lot of saying no. I had a lot of [interest] from people who I just didn't think were quite right for it. And I didn't want a bad film to be made of the book, either a sentimental one or a creepy one, so I did a lot of, "No thank you." Then when the right filmmaker came along, yes, I suppose I presented myself very much as wanting to be the writer. — Emma Donoghue

All I think when I look at you is hallelujah — Emma Donoghue

I think about Old Nick carrying me into the truck, I'm dizzy like I'm going to
fall down.
"Scared is what you're feeling," says Ma, "but brave is what you're doing."
"Huh?"
"Scaredybrave."
"Scave."
Word sandwiches always make her laugh but I wasn't being funny. — Emma Donoghue

Who knows what we all are before anything happens? — Emma Donoghue

Once I was a stupid girl; now I am an angry woman. — Emma Donoghue