Emma Donoghue

“I love it when novels contain a broad cast of characters, including queer ones.”

“I've always been religiously inclined, but it doesn't come up in most of my books.”

“I've been writing full-time since I was 23.”

“I got in the habit of giving away a book as soon as I've finished it because I lived in a housing co-op at Cambridge and had no space to keep books.”

“I'm a huge planner, more and more so as the years go by.”

“I read three books a week.”

“I am clumsy, a late and nervous driver, and despise all sports except a little gentle dancing or yoga.”

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

“It was the word 'late' that did it. Such a stupid word to use of the dead, implying that they would be with us today if they hadn't happened to be delayed in traffic somewhere...”

“I'm really not one of these procrastinators who cleans the house in order to put off writing, but life gets in the way.”

“... where there's one there's ten.'That's crazy math.”

“You're meant to have an unhappy childhood to be a writer, but there's a lot to be said for a very happy one that just lets you get on with it.”

“Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.”

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

“I hate desks; they make me feel like a child doing homework.”

“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 might last ten years, at best, but knowledge was eternal.”

“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.”

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

“Any subject we exclude from fiction will drop from our culture's memory.”

“Outside has everything. Whenever I think of a thing now like skis or fireworks or islands or elevators or yo-yos, I have to remember they're real, they're actually happening in Outside all together. It makes my head tired. And people too, firefighters teachers burglars babies saints soccer players and all sorts, they're all really in Outside. I'm not there, though, me and Ma, we're the only ones not there. Are we still real?”