Quotes from Emma Donoghue

So. In open ocean, drifting blind now, and with no way to stop moving through the dark. It is Artt who's brought them to this extremity, and it's too late for doubt. 'Never mind. We won't founder,' he assures them. 'We travel in the palm of God's hand.

Hang on, here's the Beatles, there's an oldie you might like from about fifty years ago,' she says, 'All You Need Is Love.' I'm confused. 'Don't persons need food and stuff?' 'Yeah, but all that's no good if you don't have somebody to love as well'...

I told her, In Italy, they used to blame the influence of the constellations for making them sick—that's where influenza comes from.

Cluain Mhic Nóis

looked up and found the Great Bear. I told her, In Italy, they used to blame the influence of the constellations for making them sick—that's where influenza comes from.

When I was four I didn't know about the world, or I thought it was only stories. Then Ma told me about it for real and I thought I knowed everything. But now I'm in the world all the time, I actually don't know much, I'm always confused.

How could anyone bear to be a parent? Like contracting to love a werewolf.

How illimitable is the gullibility of mankind, especially, it must be said, when combined with provincial ignorance. But Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur; that is to say, "If the world will be gulled, let it be gulled." Thus quoth Petronius, in the days of Our Lord, an aphorism just as pertinent to our own time.

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 upside-down kites. Or perhaps just yanking on us for their obscure amusement

The old world was changed utterly, dying on its feet, and a new one was struggling to be born.

I didn't forget a day of you either.

I tried to remember what it was the old ones used to sprinkle on us children at Halloween in the part of the country where Tim and I had grown up.

All rather humbling, she added ruefully. Here we are in the golden age of medicine - making such great strides against rabies, typhoid fever, diphtheria - and a common or garden influenza is beating us hollow.

And how will we recognise our island?' Trian wonders. 'By a sign of some kind.' Cormac realises something: the Prior doesn't know. Trian hesitates as if about to say more, but doesn't. It comes to Cormac that maybe it's their fault the boat hasn't reached the island yet, his and Trian's. We of little faith.

Mary regretted it a little already. Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.

Thinking that maybe we were indeed the sport of the stars. With their invisible silks, they tugged us this way and that.

It was as if I had spent thirteen years specialising in a certain language, only to discover all its speakers had scattered and renounced their native tongue. No, worse than that, because at least dead languages could be studied. This was as if I had spent my life learning to play a certain unique instrument, only to see some crazed vandal smash it to pieces.

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

Increase in Reports of Influenza. A masterpiece of understatement, as if it were only the reporting that had increased, or perhaps the pandemic was a figment of the collective imagination. I wondered whether it was the newspaper publisher's decision to play down the danger or if he'd received orders from above.

Jack. He'd never give us a phone, or a window. Ma takes my thumbs and squeezes them. We're like people in a book, and he won't let anybody else read it.

I looked at my stepmother, and she stared back at me, and our eyes were like mirrors set opposite each other, making a corridor of reflections, infinitely hollow.

Learn even from enemies.

That's what influenza means, she said. Influenza delle stelle—the influence of the stars.

Was genius a weed that sprang up anywhere, or did it need a particular habitat?