Quotes from Emma Donoghue

Sometimes you must shed your skin to save it.

It's all real in Outside, everything there is, because I saw an airplane in the blue between the clouds. Ma and me can't go there because we don't know the secret code, but it's real all the same. Before I didn't know to be mad that we can't open Door, my head was too small to have Outside in it.

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.

Your body - every body is a marvel. A wonder of creation. [...] The day your first opened your eyes, Anna, God asked just one thing: that you live.

Are stories true? ... They're magic, they're not about real people walking around today. So they're fake? No, no. Stories are a different kind of true.

Your songs are still out there on the clifftop, hanging in the air for you when you want them. Wish to speak and you will speak, girl. Wish to die and you can do it. Wish to live and here you are.

She gets sick of things fast, it's from being an adult.

Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.

But no, I used all my brave up.

What started Baby Jesus growing in Mary's tummy was an angel zoomed down, like a ghost but a really cool one with feathers. Mary was all surprised, she said, How can this be? and then, OK let it be. When Baby Jesus popped out of her vagina on Christmas she put him in a manger but not for the cows to chew, only to warm him up with their blowing because he was magic.

Good nurses follow rules," Lib growled, "but the best know when to break them.

Vitamins are medicine for not getting sick and going back to Heaven yet.

When Jack just rescued her Ma's, just succeeded doing the Great Escape: Want to go to Bed. They'll find us somewhere to sleep in a little while. No. Bed . You mean in Room? Ma's pulled back, she's staring in my eyes. Yeah. I've seen the world and I'm tired now.

You're not afraid of monsters, are you?" It depends on the monster, if it's a real one or not and if it's where I am.

In Room me and Ma had time for everything. I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter all over the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there's only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit....

I don't like a clever toilet looking at our butts.

I seem to have stumbled onto love, like a pothole in the night.

everyone goes home in the end.

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

better keep your mouth shut and seem stupid than open it and remove all doubt.

At the door, there was one of those moment when two people realize that they like each other more than they know each other. This is nicer than the opposite situation, but more awkward. You try to remember the protocol for touching. You hate to gush, or presume to much, yet you are unwilling to let the moment pass without without some gesture

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.

He [Ma's Tooth] was part of her a minute ago but now he's not. Just a thing.

The human race settles on terms with every plague in the end, the doctor told her. Or a stalemate, at the least. We somehow muddle along, sharing the earth with each new form of life.