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2817d43
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I chop the broccoli into pieces with ZigZag Knife, sometimes I swallow some when Ma's not looking and she says, "Oh, no, where's that big bit gone?" but she's not really mad because raw things make us extra alive."
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Emma Donoghue |
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ac3efca
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Keep your heart infinitesimally small and sorrow will never spy it, never plunge, never flap away with your heart in her claws.
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sorrow
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Emma Donoghue |
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1746e58
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The crow flew closer, as if to hear its praises.
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nature
description
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Emma Donoghue |
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dba59e4
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Jack. He'd never give us a phone, or a window. "Ma takes my thumbs and squeezes them. "We are people in a book, and he wont let anybody else read it." --
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Emma Donoghue |
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b6fe82a
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I was tired," she says. "I made a mistake." "You're not tired anymore?" She doesn't say anything. Then she says, "I am. But it's OK."
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Emma Donoghue |
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2f6a703
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Really, a novel does not exist, does not happen, until readers pour their own lives into it. If
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Emma Donoghue |
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20ed1d6
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May there be no frost on your potatoes, nor worms in your cabbage.
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Emma Donoghue |
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f8a0c21
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Actually, Saint Peter was in jail, one time --" I laugh. "Babies don't go in jail." "This happened when they were all grown up." I didn't know Baby Jesus grows up."
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Emma Donoghue |
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afba38e
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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 flew.
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life
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Emma Donoghue |
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9645d40
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Happiness as un-pin-downable as a louse: you feel the tickle of its passage but your fingers close on nothing.
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Emma Donoghue |
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492f866
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Adults could be barefaced liars too, of course, and about no subject so much as their own bodies. In Lib's experience, those who wouldn't cheat a shopkeeper by a farthing would lie about how much brandy they drank or whose room they'd entered and what they'd done there. Girls bursting out of their stays denied their condition till the pangs gripped them. Husbands swore blind that their wives' smashed faces were none of their doing. Everybod..
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Emma Donoghue |
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7c9082f
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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 all the living as well. In Room me and Ma had time for everything. I guess the time gets spread very thing like butter over all the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there's only a little smear of time on each place, then ev..
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world
people
life-lessons
stress
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Emma Donoghue |
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6014355
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So they're fake?" "No, no. Stories are a different kind of true."
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Emma Donoghue |
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fdca3ad
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If Earth was such unworthy soil for God's best specimens, why did he perversely plant them there?
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Emma Donoghue |
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c61051f
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But I go back down near the water with Steppa to look for treasure. We find a white shell like a snail, but when I curl my finger inside, he's gone out. "Keep it," say Steppa. "But what about when he comes home?"
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Emma Donoghue |
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3b37b26
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Fate was faceless, life arbitrary, a tale told by an idiot.
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Emma Donoghue |
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5441925
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Miss N. had taught her nurses to watch carefully in order to understand what the ill required and provide it. Not medicine--that was the doctors' domain--but the things she argued were equally crucial to recovery: light, air, warmth, cleanliness, rest, comfort, nourishment, and conversation.
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Emma Donoghue |
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defb403
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Well, they don't make their music just to pass the time," says Jenny, grinning. "Got to want something to sing about it, no?" --
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Emma Donoghue |
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7e11818
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She] was easy to enjoy but hard to know." ... "It's unbearable, the not knowing."
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Emma Donoghue |
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a970858
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Their next reunion shifted like an oasis on the horizon, and Jude couldn't plot her course. She trudged through her days, haunted by the feeling that real life was happening five thousand kilometers away.
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Emma Donoghue |
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6e5df1f
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It was like wanting ice cream instead of meat loaf, and being told that children in refugee camps would be grateful for the meat loaf. Yes, of course she had nothing to complain about, compared to so many people, but when had that ever stopped anyone from complaining? Happiness was a balloon that always hovered just out of arm's reach.
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Emma Donoghue |
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edc4d01
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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."
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nature
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Emma Donoghue |
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00ebdc7
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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.
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Emma Donoghue |
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983659f
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But for me, Room is a peculiar (and no doubt heretical) battle between Mary and the Devil for young Jesus. If God sounds absent from that triangle, that's because I think that for a small child, God's love is represented, and proved, by mother-love.
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Emma Donoghue |
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9d3f9d2
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That's tree persons in the room now and two of us, that equals five, it's nearly full of arms and legs and chests. They're all saying till I hurt. "Stop all saying at the same time."
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Emma Donoghue |
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7f4c745
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I'll be in Heaven getting your room ready.
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Emma Donoghue |
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ec9b7ac
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Because your soul must be lonely. That silence you heard, when you tried to pray--that's the sound of God listening.
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Emma Donoghue |
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afd5d4e
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Was that hard-hearted? Well, so what if it was. She'd been through enough to harden anyone. It was none of her choosing; all she'd done was clung on to her life like a spar from a shipwreck. Better to be hardened than crushed to nothing.
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Emma Donoghue |
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6288374
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Daffy had stopped talking, without her noticing. It was if he'd run out of words. He did a peculiar thing, then; he reached out and touched Mary's cheekbone; lightly, as if he was brushing away a speck of coal dust. She thought of Doll, that first morning, wiping mud out of the lost child's eyes. Her throat hurt, all at once, as if she were swallowing a stone. She wished the two of them could stay forever frozen in this moment, hidden in th..
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Emma Donoghue |
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ca1b7ff
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One never imagined that as the decades went by, one might drift into an unbounded country. It struck Lib now how alone in the world she was.
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Emma Donoghue |
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c0831d7
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We Irish have a gift for resignation. Or, put another way, fatalism.
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Emma Donoghue |
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d2615d5
|
Want to go to Bed." "They'll find us somewhere to sleep in a little while." "No. Bed." "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."
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Emma Donoghue |
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ed13819
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It occurs to Blanche that English doesn't have French's useful distinction between , meaning that something's unconstrained, and , meaning that it costs nothing. thought, speech, love: the English word that Arthur was so fond of obscures the price of things.
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Emma Donoghue |
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e58d346
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If you're sorry, folks can tell. No use piling on the verbiage.
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Emma Donoghue |
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87bd96d
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Why are places to eat called coffee shops?" I ask him. "Well, coffee's the most important thing they sell because most of us need it to keep us going, like gas in the car." Ma only drinks water and milk and juice like me, I wonder what keeps her going. "What do kids have?" "Ah, kids are just full of beans." Baked beans keep me going all right but green beans are my enemy food." --
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Emma Donoghue |
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d3e15a0
|
Scared is what you're feeling," says Ma, "but brave is what you're doing." "Huh?" "Scaredybrave."
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Emma Donoghue |
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e56f31f
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Lots of the world seems to be a repeat.
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Emma Donoghue |
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71c5bff
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You must feel an almost pathological need--understandably--to stand guard between your son and the world." "Yeah, it's called being a mother." Ma nearly snarls it."
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Emma Donoghue |
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7ff2c3e
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I think the sea's just rain and salt." "Ever taste a tear?" asks Grandma. "Yeah." "Well, that's the same as the sea." I still don't want to walk in it if it's tears."
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Emma Donoghue |
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5d1acf0
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Not beautiful, not brilliant, no longer young.
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Emma Donoghue |
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88edc4b
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Ma's in Room still, I want her here so much much much.
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Emma Donoghue |
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98d571a
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It's called mind over matter. If we don't mind, it doesn't matter.
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Emma Donoghue |
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59f62ef
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That night my new skin was red silk, shivering in the breeze.
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Emma Donoghue |
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4d48b64
|
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.
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Emma Donoghue |