283 Quotes by Emma Donoghue

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

The girl remembered London as a place of infinite freedom. Now it seemed she’d rented out her whole life to the Joneses in advance. Service had reduced her to a child, put her under orders to get up and lie down at someone else’s whim; her days were spent obeying someone else’s rules, working for someone else’s profit. Nothing was Mary’s anymore. Not even her time was hers to waste.

I was not exploiting any real individual’s story in writing ROOM, of course I was aware that my novel, by commenting on such situations, would run the risk of falling into those traps of voyeurism, sensationalism and sentimentality.

What this good man had sworn to protect me from was not the same as what I feared. I trusted that he would never let anything hurt me, but he would never let anything touch me either.

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.

I tell you frankly, Mrs. Damer, the more I see of different nations, the less sure I feel about the pre-eminence of my own.

People don’t always want to be with people. It gets tiring.

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.

So when one spring in spite of all this good advice I fell in love, it felt like disaster. I took a tiny bite and it exploded in my stomach. Love splashed through every cranny, hauled on every muscle, unlocked every joint. I was so full of astonishment, I felt ten feet tall. My shoulders itched as if wings might break through.