Emma Donoghue citations

“Books are the air I breathe, so I don't notice the seasons.”

“Scared is what you're feeling," says Ma, "but brave is what you're doing.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“I thinkis man talk for.”

“Sometimes when persons sayit sounds actually less true.”

“Everyone's got a different story.”

“People move around so much in the world, things get lost.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“A lot of the world seems to repeat itself”

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

“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.”

“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.”