Quotes by Emma Donoghue

“The crow flew closer, as if to hear its praises.”

“Daffy bent down suddenly, and picked a small startled white flower. "Anemone," he said, handing it over; he made her repeat the word until she had it right. "Find me a silk to match that.”

“Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.”

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

“People don't always want to be with people. It gets tiring.”

“Everybody's damaged by something.”

“Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.”

“If I was made of cake I'd eat myself before somebody else could.”

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

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

“It came to Mary now that her mother had been right, after all; Mary had been born for this. In sixteen years she'd shot along the shortest route she could find between life and death, as the crow f...”

“In the yard of the inn, Daffy Cadwaladyr introduced himself. "Short for Davyd," he said pleasantly.The Londoner looked as if she'd never heard a sillier name in her life.”

“In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time. Even Grandma often says that, but she and Steppa don't have jobs, so I don't know how persons with jobs do the jobs and al...”

“And why must it always be presumed that a woman's views are based on personal considerations?”

“Men never feel quite the same about a woman's body once they know it's done that thing: widened and torn to push out a baby's head.”

“The worn soles of Daffy's boots skidded on the icy stones. He'd been saving up for a new pair for Christmas, but then he'd come across an encyclopaedia in ten volumes, going cheap. Boots might last...”

“Stories are a different kind of true.”

“Any subject we exclude from fiction will drop from our culture's memory.”

“... where there's one there's ten.'That's crazy math.”

“...real loneliness is having no one to miss. Think yourself lucky you've known something worth missing.”