Quotes from Emma Donoghue

I've seen the world and I'm tired now.

Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room." Ma says it but on mute. I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.

I think buddy is man talk for sweetie .

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

Sometimes when persons say definitely it sounds actually less true.

Everyone's got a different story.

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.

The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it's going to be the next minute.

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.

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

It's called mind over matter. If we don't mind, it doesn't matter." When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.

I remember manners, that's when people are scared to make other persons mad.

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.

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

A lot of the world seems to repeat itself

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.

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?

It's called mind over matter. If we don't mind, it doesn't matter.

You know who you belong to, Jack?" "Yeah." "Yourself." He's wrong, actually, I belong to Ma.

There's not a thing wrong with you, you're right the whole way through.

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.

I hate desks; they make me feel like a child doing homework.

I got in the habit of giving away a book as soon as I've finished it because I lived in a housing co-op at Cambridge and had no space to keep books.

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.