Emma Donoghue Quotes

You never realize the holes a person leaves behind until you fall into them.

Every thought should recall the ruin of a smile.

I know beginnings, I know endings too, and life-in-death, and something else I'd rather not recall just now.

How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.

After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.

Remembering. Forgetting. I'm not sure which is worse.

I was right when I said I'd never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can't ever do anything else except look back.

And the general shot my sister. I could not look at her, but I remember the sound of when she hit the ground. I hear that sound when things hit the ground still. Anything.' If I could, I would make it so nothing ever hit the ground again.

Cassandra wondered at the mind's cruel ability to toss up flecks of the past. Why, as she neared her life's end, her grandmother's head should ring with the voices of people long since gone. Was it always this way? Did those with passage booked on death's silent ship always scan the dock for faces of the long-departed?

I could remember the details as if it had happened yesterday, even though it was hard to believe some of it had happened at all. Funerals were tricky like that. And life, I guess. The important parts you blocked out altogether, but the random, slanted moments haunted you, replaying over and over in your mind.

You probably wouldn't remember. I probably couldn't forget.

We're captive on the carousel of time, we can't return we can only look behind.

Remembering is only a new form of suffering.

memories should be sharp when one has nothing else to live for

Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustomed to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, "just in case," in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.

I didn't dare think of the future; the past was still happening.

I have a beautiful address book a friend gave me in 1966. I literally cannot open it again. Ever. It sits on the shelf with over a hundred names crossed out. What is there to say? There are no words. I'll never understand why it happened to us.

Forgetting lets you live without the pain for a moment but remembering hits hard.

When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry.

Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you'll find an edge to cut you.

The void Papa's death left in me became a kind of cavity, into which later experiences were to be laid.

The Past is such a curious Creature To look her in the Face A Transport may receipt us Or a Disgrace-.

...the air so still it aches like the place where the tooth was on the morning after you’ve been to the dentist or aches like your heart in the bosom when you stand on the street corner waiting for the light to change and happen to recollect how things once were and how they might have been yet if what happened had not happened.

Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. It is only later that they claim remembrance, when they show their scars.

I'm not sure whether I've been happy. After my last book tour, I sat on my balcony with a cup of tea. I thought: 'You can't rewind the movie. I've spent more than half my life in the Middle East. There have been great moments of horror and depression and loneliness.'