Emma Donoghue Quotes

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

“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.”

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

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

“I looked in my mirror and saw, not myself, but every place I'd never been.”

“I remember manners, that's when people are scared to make other persons mad.”

“People are locked up in all sorts of ways.”

“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.”

“Soon I must vote for Oscars and BAFTAs, so I've been having marathon screening sessions. Top of my list so far is ROOM, which is brilliant in every way. The boy actor, Jacob Tremblay, is astounding. But most of all, it's a film that never stoops to the rigged mini-plots so often used to generate viewer excitement: it goes its own way, always surprising, always utterly believable. The writer of both the novel and the screenplay, Emma Donoghue, has produced a perfect work. People seem surprised that a first-time screenwriter can be so good, but the truth is screenwriting's not hard, it's having something strong and real and true to write about that's hard. Emma Donoghue is original and wise: that's rare.”

“I've seen the world and I'm tired now.”

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

“Ma: You're gonna love it.
Jack: What?
Ma: The world.”

“Everybody's damaged by something.”

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

“Stories are a different kind of true.”

“When I was a little kid I thought like a little kid, but now I'm five I know everything.”

“I thinkis man talk for.”

“Sometimes when persons sayit sounds actually less true.”

“Everyone's got a different story.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened.”

“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.”

“Change for your own sake, if you must, not for what you imagine another will ask of you.”

“Maybe I’m a human, but I’m a me-and-Ma as well.”

“There's not a thing wrong with you, you're right the whole way through.”

“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.”

“You know who you belong to, Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“Yourself.”
He’s wrong, actually, I belong to Ma.”

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

“… sentences swallowed and sung back and swallowed all over again. She was made entirely out of words.”

“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.”