Quotes from Emma Donoghue

On the whole I am inclined to think that a witch should not kiss. Perhaps it is the not being kissed that makes her a witch; perhaps the source of her power is the breath of loneliness around her.

It;s called a flea market, because they sell old things that might have fleas living in them.

Colleen ; that was what the Irish seemed to call every young female

Wasn't it so often the girl --no matter how young-- who got blamed for having incited her molester with a look?

Ambition was an itch in Mary's show, a maggot in her guts.

I must be cruel, only to be kind

I didn't know I was swearing fealty to a lunatic.' For a moment Artt can't catch his breath. 'I see now you won't rest till you've made this island a hell on earth,' Cormac says. 'I release myself from my vows.

They're her book club but I don't know why because they're not reading books.

We go in a skyscraper that's Paul's office, he says he's crazy busy but he makes a Xerox of my hands and buys me a candy bar out of the vending machine. Going down in the elevator pressing the buttons, I play I'm actually inside a vending machine. We go in a bit of the government to get Grandma a new Social Security card because she lost the old one, we have to wait for years and years. Afterwards she takes me in a coffee shop where there's no green beans, I choose a cookie bigger than my face.

And one of these days, even this flu will have run its course. Really? Mary O'Rahilly asked. How can you be sure? 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.

of human traffic that connected all nations into one great suffering body.

Por qué se ha reído de que sepa todas las palabras, si yo no lo decía en broma?— le pregunto a mamá. — Ah, qué más da, siempre es bueno hacer reír a la gente

S]he takes a killer. Sometimes she takes two, never more than two, because some things are good for us but too much is suddenly bad.

The hammock hangs on hooks in two trees at the very back of the yard, one is a shortish tree that's only twice my tall and bent over, one is a million times high with silvery leaves.

And the flames are every colour of the rainbow. They can't be, observed Daffy. Well, they are, she said cheekily. Have you been there, that you know so much about it? No, said Daffy, very calm, but I'd wager I know more than you about the chemical processes of combustion. Mary rolled her eyes. Did he hope to dazzle her with syllables?

I've been in the world three weeks and a half, I still never know what's going to hurt.

Please, he added. I meant to say, please. I've thought it all through. I've thought of nothing else. I haven't read a book in weeks!

In the year 1752 it was announced that the second of September would be followed by the fourteenth. The matter was merely one of wording, of course; time in its substance was not to undergo any change.

Scared is what you're feeling, says Ma, but brave is what you're doing.

Brother, there's no end to your knowledge.' 'I'm just old,' Cormac says with a chuckle.

It was easy to lose a part of your body, it seemed to her; there were so many ways, it was a wonder anybody reached their death intact.

We spend most of our lives holding on to objects, he thought, and finally they fall from our cold dead hands and those who tidy up after us have to worry of what to do with all this stuff.

She's asleep, she can´t be mad in her sleep, can she?

My future was about to happen.