Quotes from Emma Donoghue

I'd actually rather not have you thinking about that stuff every time you look at me, OK? There's more tears rolling down Grandma. Sweetie, she says, all I think when I look at you is hallelujah.

These inexperienced doctors rarely knew one end of a woman from the other.

In her absence I cleaned the dead woman, working gently, as if Ita Noonan could still feel everything.

That's what influenza means, she said. Influenza delle Stelle - the influence of the stars. Medieval Italians thought that illness proved that the heavens were governing their dates, that people were quite literally star-crossed.

You can't be a little bit dead. If you're not in the ground yet, you're one hundred per cent alive.

The human mind needs boundaries. Without them it would fall in on itself, like a crushed honeycomb.

Then she lifted the breastbone and frontal ribs in one go, the raising of a portcullis. That made me tremble. How frail my own rib cage; how breakable we all were.

It came to Daffy then, how easily the worst in oneself could rise up and strike a blow. How even the most enlightened man had little power over his own darkness.

After a while the first lights stand out in the sky. Trian asks, 'Are they holes, the stars?' 'Bodies of cold fire,' Artt corrects him, 'fixed in a sphere around the earth. God spins it westwards every day. That's what makes the air and the clouds move.' He cranes up, a little dizzy, imagining that giant hand flicking the globe.

Trust me, the island must have water, since we need it to live. This place was set aside for us when the earth was made.

she feels that surge of warmth, and this time she remembers what it means: not love but piss. Or the love that's mixed with piss and can't be separated from it.

When I was as young as you are now I learned how to save my own life.

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. No, you're the ones who matter right now. Attentive nurses, I mean—tender loving care, that seems to be all that's saving lives.

The thing is to take your life in your hands.

As far as I could tell, the whole world was a machine grinding to a halt. Across the globe, in hundreds of languages, signs were going up urging people to cover their coughs.

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.

My eyes dawdled across the missalette. I had never noticed before that the official title of the 'Lord have mercy' prayer was the gracious phrase 'Invitation to Sorrow'. Hey there, Sorrow, how've you been keeping? Come on in. If your bike doesn't have lights you can always crash on our sofa tonight. Oh, so you'll be staying a while, Sorrow? Planning to get to know me better? Grand, so. There's tea in the pot. All

If the labouring woman turned on her right, the uterus might compress the vena cava and reduce blood flow to her heart.)

I was taught that being a good nurse means knowing when to call a doctor.

We all live in an unwalled city, that was it. I saw lines scored across the map of Ireland; carved all over the globe. Train tracks, roads, shipping channels, a web of human traffic that connected all nations into one great suffering body.

Maybe history really boiled down to how the hell did we happen to happen?

And then I woke— Then I woke up— I woke, and found that life was duty.

Bridie and I turned to each other. Oh, the secrecy and heat of that glance.

Look around you, Mr. Groyne. This is where every nation draws its first breath. Women have been paying the blood tax since time began.