Emma Donoghue Quotes

“Some [crayons] are spelled wrong on purpose for a joke, like Mauvelous, that’s not very funny I don’t think.”

″‘I’ll get bigger and bigger and bigger till I turn into a human.’ ‘Actually, you’re a human already,’ says Ma. ‘Human’s what we both are.’ I thought the word for us was real.”

“How can there be two Pauls? ‘You’d call him Uncle Paul.’ That’s too many names, my head’s full. My tummy’s still empty like the apple isn’t there. ‘What’s for lunch?‘”

“Near the start [of the note], there’s two words I never saw before, Ma says they’re her names like TV persons have, what everybody in Outside used to call her, it’s only me who says Ma.”

″[Ma] gets sick of things fast, it’s from being an adult.”

″‘You figure some kind of cult? […] The long hair, no surnames, the state of that tooth…‘”

“Beep beep, that’s Door. Ma jumps up and makes a sound, I think she hit her head. She shuts Wardrobe tight.”

“What if [Old Nick] comes and Ma won’t wake up, will he be even more madder? Will he make worse marks on her?”

“Today I’m five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I’m changed to five, abracadabra. Before that I was three, then two, then one, then zero. ‘Was I minus numbers?‘”

″‘Uh-oh, hitting’s not allowed.’ […] ‘Actually, boxing… it’s nasty but it’s a game, it’s kind of allowed if they have those special gloves on.‘”

″‘I thought he was going to punish us too.’ I try to imagine. ‘Like if there were two Rooms, if he put me in one and you in the other one.‘”

“I’d love to watch TV all the time but it rots our brains.”

″‘Germs could make you die.‘”

“Waiting for my cake takes hour and hours.”

“I’m learning lots more manners. When something tastes yucky we say it’s interesting.”

“Nothing makes Ma scared. Except Old Nick maybe. Mostly she calls him just ‘him’, I didn’t even know the name for him until I saw a cartoon about a guy that comes in the night called Old Nick.”

“If the rings [of the stovetop] ever go against something like a dish towel or our clothes even, flames would run all over with orange tongues and burn Room to ashes with us coughing and choking and screaming with the worst pain ever.”

“There’s hours and hours, hundreds of them.”

“I know that already, everything’s breakable.”

″‘Then why is she staring at us?’ Her arm goes around me tight. ‘I’m nursing my son, is that OK with you, lady?‘”