|
f92bd86
|
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 |
|
356aede
|
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....
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
ac81ce0
|
Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.
|
|
pain
words
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
07b5208
|
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."
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
d69d0aa
|
She gets sick of things fast, it's from being an adult.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
c6345e8
|
Good nurses follow rules," Lib growled, "but the best know when to break them."
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
614e97d
|
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. ." "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."
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
8d685d2
|
everyone goes home in the end.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
10cd16b
|
I don't like a clever toilet looking at our butts.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
fa7a682
|
How could the child bear not just the hunger, but the boredom? The rest of humankind used meals to divide the day, Lib realized - as a reward, as entertainment, the chiming of an inner clock. For Anna, during this watch, each day had to pass like one endless moment.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
253145d
|
But no, I used all my brave up.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
7d544a7
|
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.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
57e93b0
|
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."
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
f50b60e
|
If he guessed his mistake, if he wanted me back, I thought, let him suffer and work for it as I had worked and suffered. Let him follow me over a mountain of iron and a lake of glass, and wear out three swords in my defense. But at my truest, lying awake trying to count the stars, I knew my prince would not follow. In my mind's eye I saw him in his palace, stroking the gold and silver and starry dresses which were fading now like leaves in ..
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
0607f1e
|
I was beautiful, or so my father told me. My oval mirror showed me a face with nothing written on it. I had suitors aplenty but wanted none of them: their doggish devotion seemed too easily won. I had an appetite for magic, even then. I wanted something improbably and perfect as a red rose just opening.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
436a25f
|
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.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
9f22908
|
He [Ma's Tooth] was part of her a minute ago but now he's not. Just a thing.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
ba57fc0
|
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.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
3d14bf5
|
No point my telling you he's not worth it, I suppose. . . I've seen enough men in my time. Whoever he is, he's not worth what you'll pay.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
c679078
|
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 |
|
e12e4e7
|
So then she took me home, or I took her home, or we were both somehow taken to the closest thing.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
155eb04
|
For some people, she thought, trials were only temporary; they sailed towards happiness through the roughest weather.
|
|
luck
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
acd3dff
|
It's weird to have something that's mine-not-Ma's. Everything else is both of ours. I guess my body is mine and the ideas that happen in my head. But my cells are made out of her cells so I'm kind of hers. Also when I tell her what I'm thinking and she tells me what she's thinking, our each ideas jump into our other's head, like coloring blue crayon on top of yellow that makes green.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
f1a11ef
|
I'd love to watch TV all the time, but it rots our brains. Before I came down from Heaven Ma left it on all day long and got turned into a zombie that's like a ghost but walks 'thump thump.' So now she always switches off after one show, then the cells multiply again in the day and we can watch another show after dinner and grow more brains in our sleep.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
8fb3de5
|
Do you realize what a beacon you've become?" "A--I beg your pardon?" "A beacon of hope," says the woman, smiling. "As soon as we announced we'd be doing this interview, our viewers started calling in, e-mails, text messages, telling us you're an angel, a talisman of goodness . . ." Ma makes a face. "All I did was I survived, and I did a pretty good job of raising Jack. A good enough job." "You're very modest." "No, what I am is irritat..
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
f0b8cd1
|
Somewhere between good and bad - bits of both stuck together." Ma"
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
0c06078
|
Perhaps we get, not what we deserve, but what we demand.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
d5de3d0
|
I've been in the world three weeks and a half, I still never know what's going to hurt.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
9b44c65
|
better keep your mouth shut and seem stupid than open it and remove all doubt.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
62b5bd4
|
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.
|
|
life
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
8f00564
|
And why must it always be presumed that a woman's views are based on personal considerations?
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
df57d52
|
Who knows what we all are before anything happens?
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
61c077e
|
coffee's the most important thing they sell because most of us need it to keep us going, like gas in the car.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
32a7bbf
|
No, I mean everything feels different, but it's because I'm different.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
ccdf278
|
I thought humans were or weren't, I didn't know someone could be a bit human. Then what are his other bits?
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
604e547
|
I may have had moments of regret in my life, but you know, they wouldn't add up to an hour.
|
|
life
regret
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
f31612a
|
Once I was a stupid girl; now I am an angry woman.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
55405e5
|
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 |
|
4cc48b4
|
She] was easy to enjoy but hard to know.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
6918f54
|
Also everywhere 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 |
|
b927a11
|
I think she was too tired to play anymore, she was in a hurry to get to Heaven so she didn't wait, why didn't she wait for me?
|
|
motherhood
suicide
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
0709974
|
One of them asked what was in my skirts to make them so heavy, and I said, Knives, and he took his hand off my thigh and never touched me again.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
9593273
|
Perhaps there is no providence, no fate, no grand plan, she thinks now. Perhaps we dig our own traps and lie down in them.
|
|
|
Emma Donoghue |
|
4f7c44f
|
In the days when wishing was having, I got what I wished and then I wish I hadn't.
|
|
wishes
wishful-thinking
|
Emma Donoghue |