Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.
Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin.
“The crow flew closer, as if to hear its praises.”
“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.”
“For some people, she thought, trials were only temporary; they sailed towards happiness through the roughest weather.”
“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 f...”
“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.”
“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...”
“Inspirational quotes are only making you more miserable.”
“It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary”
“The hardest thing about depression is that it is addictive. It begins to feel uncomfortable not to be depressed. You feel guilty for feeling happy.”
“Pain is not the same as suffering. Left to itself, the body discharges pain spontaneously, letting go of it the moment that the underlying cause is healed. Suffering is pain that we hold on to. It ...”
“In pleasant peace and security How suddenly the soul in a man begins to die He shall look up above the stalled oxen Envying the cruel falcon, And dig under the straw for a stone To bruise himself on.”
“It is amazing, though, what pains your subconscious will undergo in achieve sustainable peace.”
“All words are pegs to hang ideas on.”
“A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.”
“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”