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“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, Slammerkin

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

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

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

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

“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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, Slammerkin

“Nie możesz pozwolić by fakt, że ktoÅ› chce twojej Å›mierci, uniemożliwiÅ‚ ci wypicie twojej herbaty.”
― Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin

“Daffy'emu przeszÅ‚o przez myÅ›l, że najgorsza część ludzkiej natury mogÅ‚a z Å‚atwoÅ›ciÄ… wziąć górÄ™ i uderzyć w najmniej spodziewanym momencie. Nawet najbardziej Å›wiatÅ‚y czÅ‚owiek miaÅ‚ niewielkÄ… wÅ‚adzÄ™ nad czajÄ…cÄ… siÄ™ w nim ciemnoÅ›ciÄ….”
― Emma Donoghue, 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, 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, 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, Slammerkin

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

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

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

“Slovenly, slatternly sluts and slipshod, sleezy slammerkins that we are!”
― Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin: The compelling historical novel from the author of LEARNED BY HEART

“Decent folk don’t wander like we do,â€� as Doll said with a curl of her lip; ‘decent folk stay in their place.”
― Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin

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