Quotes from Slammerkin

“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.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“For some people, she thought, trials were only temporary; they sailed towards happiness through the roughest weather.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“I may have had moments of regret in my life, but you know, they wouldn't add up to an hour.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“The crow flew closer, as if to hear its praises.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“Was that hard-hearted? Well, so what if it was. She'd been through enough to harden anyone. It was none of her choosing; all she'd done was clung on to her life like a spar from a shipwreck. Better to be hardened than crushed to nothing.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“Daffy bent down suddenly, and picked a small startled white flower. "Anemone," he said, handing it over; he made her repeat the word until she had it right. "Find me a silk to match that.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“Daffy had stopped talking, without her noticing. It was if he'd run out of words. He did a peculiar thing, then; he reached out and touched Mary's cheekbone; lightly, as if he was brushing away a speck of coal dust. She thought of Doll, that first morning, wiping mud out of the lost child's eyes. Her throat hurt, all at once, as if she were swallowing a stone. She wished the two of them could stay forever frozen in this moment, hidden in the grass, as the setting sun slid across the fields of Monmouth. Before any asking, any refusal. While this strange, tame young man was still looking at her as is she were worth any price.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“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.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“Please," he added. "I meant to say, please. I've thought it all through. I've thought of nothing else. I haven't read a book in weeks!”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“It was easy to lose a part of your body, it seemed to her; there were so many ways, it was a wonder anybody reached their death intact.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“Nie możesz pozwolić by fakt, że ktoś chce twojej śmierci, uniemożliwił ci wypicie twojej herbaty.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“The lightest touch might keep Mary there, rooted in this frozen alley. Instead, she stretched out her hand to the worn red ribbon in Doll's wig. Was it the same one, she wondered, the first one, the ribbon the child Mary had set her eyes and heart on at the Seven Dials, three long years ago?”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“Ambition was an itch in Mary's show, a maggot in her guts.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“She leaped into space, high, higher than she'd ever been in her life. She came down with a clean snap, and the crowd scattered like birds from the swing of her feet.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“And tonight Mary could taste bitterness going down like a nut, settling in her stomach. It planted itself, put down roots, and began to grow, nourished on her dark blood.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“That's what you got for being a servant of no ambition: a shrunken life, hung up like a gibbet as a warning to others.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“In the yard of the inn, Daffy Cadwaladyr introduced himself. "Short for Davyd," he said pleasantly.

The Londoner looked as if she'd never heard a sillier name in her life.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“And the flames are every colour of the rainbow."

"They can't be," observed Daffy.

"Well, they are," she said cheekily. "Have you been there, that you know so much about it?"

"No," said Daffy, very calm, "but I'd wager I know more than you about the chemical processes of combustion."

Mary rolled her eyes. Did he hope to dazzle her with syllables?”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“In the year 1752 it was announced that the second of September would be followed by the fourteenth. The matter was merely one of wording, of course; time in its substance was not to undergo any change.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“So this was liberty. Mary was beginning to recognise the taste of it in her mouth: terror salting the sweetness.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“The girl remembered London as a place of infinite freedom. Now it seemed she'd rented out her whole life to the Joneses in advance. Service had reduced her to a child, put her under orders to get up and lie down at someone else's whim; her days were spent obeying someone else's rules, working for someone else's profit. Nothing was Mary's anymore. Not even her time was hers to waste.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“It seemed to him that there was some urgency in the air, but then he always felt like that in February: a sense of something breaking out through his skin.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“Daffy'emu przeszło przez myśl, że najgorsza część ludzkiej natury mogła z łatwością wziąć górę i uderzyć w najmniej spodziewanym momencie. Nawet najbardziej światły człowiek miał niewielką władzę nad czającą się w nim ciemnością.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“When she pulled the ribbon out of her mattress, at first light the next morning, it was brown.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“She struggled to think of one day in more than fifteen years of life when instead of drifting along like a leaf on the river she’d simply grabbed what she wanted. The”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“Mary regretted it a little already. Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“But what on earth had possessed her, to take a wagon this far beyond nowhere? When”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

“It came to Daffy then, how easily the worst in oneself could rise up and strike a blow. How even the most enlightened man had little power over his own darkness.”
― Emma Donoghue, quote from Slammerkin

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