Quotes from The Passions of Emma

Penelope Williamson ·  464 pages

Rating: (436 votes)


“Shay," she said. "Shay McKenna," as if trying out his name, saying it for the first time. "Did you ever love me, even a little?"

Love you?" He turned his head and brushed his lips across her fingers. "I'm loving you now, mo chridh. After I'm dead, a thousand years from now, whatever's left of me, be it a soul or just a handful of dust, that will be loving you.”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma


“We are all of us both light and dark, do you not find it so, Miss Tremayne? Wanting in our hearts to do right and able to do wrong. And so it’s the choices we’ve made, surely, that make of us what we are”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma


“When Emma sat down on a rock to take off her shoes and stockings, he said to her, “You’ve Yankee feet. Long and skinny.”
“And you’ve Irish feet,” she said, right back at him. “Big and always in your mouth”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma


“We are all of us both light and dark, do you not find it so, Miss Tremayne? Wanting in our hearts to do right and able to do wrong. And so it’s the choices we’ve made, surely, that make of us what we are.”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma


“She’d just spent the last hours engaged in endless small talk. Now, when it mattered so much, she seemed to have no words to say, or even breath to speak them with. All her life she’d always had such trouble with words: finding them and losing them, hoarding them and wasting them.”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma



About the author

Penelope Williamson
Born place: in Fairbanks, Alaska, The United States
Born date January 1, 1949
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Popular quotes

“Punching - 2 shillings
Both eyes blacked - 4 shillings
Nose and jaw broke - 10 shillings
Jacked out (knocked out with a blackjack) - 15 shillings
Ear chewed off - same as previous
Leg or arm broke - 19 shillings
Shot in leg - 25 shillings
Stab - same as previous
Doing the Big Job - 3 pounds and up”
― Eoin Colfer, quote from The Reluctant Assassin


“What's that?" he asked.
"A balance sheet," I said. "To keep track of your payments."
He asked whether Pop had written it or me. When I answered truthfully, he handed the paper back like the useless thing it was. "Thank you," he said. "I won't be needing this."
Which took me by surprise and set me stammering how it was proof he was making his payments, and how he should take it because it was the right and proper way to do business.
"The rules aren't the same for me as they are for you," Joseph replied, shaking his head. "Don't you know that, Will?" Which put my nose out of joint so bad that I told him he was being rude, and that I was only trying to do him a favor at no small risk to myself.
Joseph's face went blank as the cloudless sky overhead. He eyed the receipt. Said, "Thank you, Mr. William. But I can't accept." And got back on his bicycle.
"That all you got to say?" I near shouted, frustrated at how easily he'd turned my good intentions into a fool's errand. And the quickest flash of hate you ever did see danced across the dark of his eyes.
I stood there, feeling awkward and a fool. Joseph put one foot on a pedal and said, real quiet, "If you'll excuse me, I've a funeral to attend."
Only then did I notice the band of mourning black around his upper arm.
"Who died?" I asked stupidly.
Joseph's eyes were flat. "Nobody important, Mr. William. Only a Negro boy like me.”
― Jennifer Latham, quote from Dreamland Burning


“We are never going to sing this again," she told them, trying to explain her reasoning to the surprised youngsters. The song reinforced all the crudest stereotypes of what a Negro could do or be. Sometimes, she knew, the most important battles for dignity, pride, and progress were fought with the simplest of actions.”
― quote from Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race


“I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept this confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land, but that something in the Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this land, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”
― Shelby Foote, quote from The Civil War, Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville


“We want thing we cannot have. We seek to reclaim a certain moment , sound, sensation. I want to hear my mother's voice. I want to see my children as children. Hands small, feet swift. Everything changes. Boy grown, father dead, daughter taller than me, weeping from a bad dream. Please stay forever, I say to the things I know. Don't go. Don't grow.”
― Patti Smith, quote from M Train


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