Quotes from 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!'

Any parent knows how to be the ideal parent.

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.

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.

I'm a huge planner, more and more so as the years go by.

I would say I have sort of a natural gift for character, and following one person's point of view at a time, and dialogue, but I'm not naturally good at strong plot.

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

Change for your own sake, if you must, not for what you imagine another will ask of you.

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

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.

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

I looked in my mirror and saw, not myself, but every place I'd never been.

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.

There are some tales not for telling, whether because they are too long, too precious, too laughable, too painful, too easy to need telling or too hard to explain. After all, after years and travels my secrets are all I have left to chew on in the night.

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.

sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.

A fast didn't go fast; it was the slowest thing there was. Fast meant a door shut fast, firmly. A fastness, a fortress. To fast was to hold fast to emptiness, to say no and no and no again.

I don't know why hurting means getting better.

People are locked up in all sorts of ways.

We used to call it her Cinderella complex, because often when she had agreed to go out in the evening she would be seized by panic and announce that she had nothing to wear.

She murmured, We could always blame the stars. I beg your pardon, Doctor? That's what influenza means, she said. Influenza delle stelle—the influence of the stars. Medieval Italians thought the illness proved that the heavens were governing their fates, that people were quite literally star-crossed. I pictured that, the celestial bodies trying to fly us like upsidedown kites. Or perhaps just yanking on us for their obscure amusement.

It's weird to have something that's mine-not-Ma's. Everything else is both of ours. I guess my body is mine and the ideas that happen in my head. But my cells are made out of her cells so I'm kind of hers.

How could the child bear not just the hunger, but the boredom? The rest of humankind used meals to divide the day, Lib realized - as a reward, as entertainment, the chiming of an inner clock. For Anna, during this watch, each day had to pass like one endless moment.

I bang my head on a faucet. "Careful." Why do persons only say that after the hurt?