Emma Donoghue famous quotes

It's painful to consider anything but writing.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Writing #Painful

The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Insightful #Stories #Sides

There are some tales not for telling, whether because they are too long, too precious, too laughable, too painful, too easy to need telling or too hard to explain. After all, after years and travels my secrets are all I have left to chew on in the night.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Night #Years #Long

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

#Book #Air #Breathe

Stories are a different kind of true.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Writing #Different #Stories

If I was made of cake I'd eat myself before somebody else could.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Cake #Made

When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I'm five I know everything
-- Emma Donoghue

#Kids #Littles #Little Kid

In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time...I don't know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well...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.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Jobs #House #Stressed

...sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Made #Sentences

...real loneliness is having no one to miss. Think yourself lucky you've known something worth missing.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Real #Loneliness #Thinking

Kissing a witch is a perilous business. Everybody knows it's ten times as dangerous as letting her touch your hand, or cut your hair, or steal your shoes. What simpler way is there than a kiss to give power a way into your heart?
-- Emma Donoghue

#Heart #Kissing #Cutting

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.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Reading #Writing #Individuality

[E]verywhere I'm looking at kids, adults mostly don't seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don't want to actually play with them, they'd rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there's a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn't even hear.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Cute #Coffee #Kids

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

#People #Mad #Scared

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
-- Emma Donoghue

#Hate #Doors #Opposites

For all that being a parent is normal statistically, it's not normal psychologically. It produces some of the most extreme emotions you'll ever have.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Parent #Normal #Emotion

I read three books a week.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Book #Three #Week

A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Different #Situation #Novel

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.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Book #Space #Giving

Some writers can produce marvelous plots without planning it out, but I can't. In particular I need to know the structure of a novel: what's going to happen in each chapter and each scene.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Plot #Needs #Planning

Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Courage #Brave #Feelings

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.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Fall #Thinking #Laughing

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.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Goodbye #Doors #Looks

I've always been religiously inclined, but it doesn't come up in most of my books.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Book #Come Up

I think it would be a shame for any writer to let their publishers in any way corral them into a single genre.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Thinking #Would Be #Way

Change for your own sake, if you must, not for what you imagine another will ask of you.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Sake #Imagine

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.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Sorry #Stories #Want

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.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Years #Two #Castles

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

#Inspiration #Way

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

#Teeth #Minutes

It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Hurt #Mind #Matter

I am clumsy, a late and nervous driver, and despise all sports except a little gentle dancing or yoga.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Sports #Yoga #Dancing

...Sometimes I suspect that what had really happened was that we became more resigned, more cynical, raised our pain thresholds as we lowered our expectations. All in all, settled for less.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Pain #Expectations #Cynical

We used to call it her Cinderella complex, because often when she had agreed to go out in the evening she would be seized by panic and announce that she had nothing to wear.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Would Be #Panic #Evening

Ma's still nodding. "You're the one who matters, though. Just you." I shake my head till it's wobbling because there's no just me.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Matter #Nodding #Shakes

I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Looks #Holes #More Time

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

#World #Brightness #Next

For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Book #People #Faces

Maybe I’m a human, but I’m a me-and-Ma as well.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Wells #Humans

You know who you belong to Jack? - Yeah. Yourself. - He's wrong, actually, I belong to Ma. p. 261 Room by E Donoghue
-- Emma Donoghue

#Rooms #Yeah

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

#Magic #Sound #Paper

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.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Real #Airplane #Clouds

People are locked up in all sorts of ways.
-- Emma Donoghue

#People #Way #Locked Up

Me and Ma have a deal, we're going to try everything one time so we know what we like.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Trying #Deals

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.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Thinking #Jumping #Blue

Everyone's got a different story.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Different #Stories

People don't always want to be with people. It gets tiring.
-- Emma Donoghue

#People #Want #Tire

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

#Moving #People #World

Everybody's damaged by something.
-- Emma Donoghue

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

#Medicine #Sick #Heaven

I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Writing #Order #House

The way to my heart is through Belgian milk chocolate.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Heart #Chocolate #Way

Writers should be applauded for their ability to make things up.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Should #Ability

You cannot predict literary success; the only way you can possibly aim for it is to do your thing and do it well.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Way #Aim #Wells

You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Childhood #Unhappy #Said

Before I had kids, I thought you should never lie to a kid. But now I've had them, I realize you almost lie to them by definition, because if you're trying to summarize something for your 1-year-old, you put it in very simple terms. You only gradually complicate the explanation as they get older.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Lying #Kids #Simple

I tend to be so lost in the work that I don't notice the weather. My partner will come home and say, 'Beautiful day, wasn't it?' and I'll say, 'Was it?' as I won't have noticed the real world at all.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Beautiful #Real #Home

Sometimes you must shed your skin to save it.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Skins #Sometimes #Shed

Identity politics are wearisome; you don't want to go on speaking for any one group as a writer.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Identity #Groups #Goes On

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.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Strong #Able #Emma

I'm finding that success is way more time-consuming than failure ever was.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Way #More Time #Consuming

I'm a huge planner, more and more so as the years go by.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Years #Planners

We're standing on the deck that's all wooden like the deck of a ship. There's fuzz on it, little bundles. Grandma says it's some kind of pollen from a tree. "Which one?" I'm staring up at all the differents. "Can't help you there, I'm afraid." In Room we knowed what everything was called but in the world there's so much, persons don't even know the names.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Grandma #Names #Tree

Sometimes when persons say definitely it sounds actually less true.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Sound #Sometimes #Persons

I've been writing full-time since I was 23,
-- Emma Donoghue

#Writing

The idea was to focus on the primal drama of parenthood: the way from moment to moment you swing from comforter to tormentor, just as kids simultaneously light up our lives and drive us nuts. I was trying to capture that strange, bipolar quality of parenthood. For all that being a parent is normal statistically, it's not normal psychologically. It produces some of the most extreme emotions you'll ever have.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Drama #Kids #Nuts

She leaped into space, high, higher than she'd ever been in her life. She came down with a clean snap, and the crowd scattered like birds from the swing of her feet.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Space #Swings #Feet

Once I spent a whole day there, a blade of grass in each hand to anchor me to the warm earth. I watched the sun rise, pass over my head and set. Ladybirds mated on my knuckle; a shrew nibbled a hole in my stocking while I tried not to laugh. Such a day was worth any punishment.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Hands #Anchors #Punishment

When I was four I thought everything in TV was just TV, then I was five and Ma unlied about lots of it being pictures of real and Outside being totally real. Now I’m in Outside but it turns out lots of it isn’t real at all.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Real #Four #Tvs

Any parent knows how to be the ideal parent.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Parent

Every parent has those moments where they look at their child and think, 'There's a demon in those eyes and no one can see it but me!
-- Emma Donoghue

#Children #Eye #Thinking

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

#Children #Hate #Homework

Nowadays, 'invisibility' was supposed to be the big problem, but the way I saw it was, all that mattered was to be visible to yourself.
-- Emma Donoghue

#Saws #Invisibility #Way

I watch his hands, they're lumpy but clever. "Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?" Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?
-- Emma Donoghue

#Clever #Hands #Laughing