Is there a word for adults when they aren't parents?" Steppa laughs. "Folks with other things to do?"" Like what things?"" Jobs, I guess. Friends. Trips. Hobbies.

— Emma Donoghue

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 crow flew.

— Emma Donoghue

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 world at all.

— Emma Donoghue

I think she was too tired to play anymore, she was in a hurry to get to Heaven so she didn't wait, why didn't she wait for me?

— Emma Donoghue

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...

— Emma Donoghue

Jo claimed that the reason people survived breakups was that within days of the amputation, Mother Nature started reminding you of what you had been doing without, what could have been better, all the small discontents you had been filing away.

— Emma Donoghue

Keep your heart infinitesimally small and sorrow will never spy it, never plunge, never flap away with your heart in her claws.

— Emma Donoghue

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

— Emma Donoghue

Men never feel quite the same about a woman's body once they know it's done that thing: widened and torn to push out a baby's head.

— Emma Donoghue

Nowadays 'invisibility' was supposed to be the big problem, but the way I saw it was, all that mattered was to be visible to yourself.

— Emma Donoghue