Emma Donoghue

“Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.”

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

“Everybody's damaged by something.”

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

“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...”

“For some people, she thought, trials were only temporary; they sailed towards happiness through the roughest weather.”

“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.”

“The worn soles of Daffy's boots skidded on the icy stones. He'd been saving up for a new pair for Christmas, but then he'd come across an encyclopaedia in ten volumes, going cheap. Boots mig...”

“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.”

“I tend to be so lost in the work that I don't notice the weather. My partner will come home and say, 'Beautiful day, wasn't it?' and I'll say, 'Was it?' as I won't have noticed the real worl...”

“Before I had kids, I thought you should never lie to a kid. But now I've had them, I realize you almost lie to them by definition, because if you're trying to summarize something for your 1-...”

“Kids delight in 'magical thinking', whether in the form of the Tooth Fairy or the saints: whether you see these as comforting lies or eternal verities, they are part of how we help kids make...”