Catherine McKenzie > Catherine's Quotes

“And while I got that about him, he never seemed to understand or believe it when I told him I wasn't like that. That I was happy to coast. To drift and summersault like a dried-out leaf in the late fall, hoping to avoid the rake, the collecting pile, the compost heap.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“Love isn't simple, Katie, and neither is life. Things that are worth having are sometimes complicated, and they evoke complicated emotions. You know, one of the reasons people often turn to alcohol or drugs is that they can't deal with complications.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Spin

“You don't want to work to fall in love, you want to be in love. Like in a fairy tale.”
― Catherine McKenzie

“It seemed like almost nothing had happened, but that almost nothing changed everything for me.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Forgotten

“He comes down next to me, and when I hold out my hand, he takes it. Our fingers lace together. And in that feeling, that perfect feeling of our hands and fingers pressed together, I want to tell him everything. I want to tell him about Josh, and his sister, Emily. I want to tell him about tall, crazy Gert. I want to tell him about bridges and funerals, and most of all, maps. More than anything else, I want to tell him about myself. I want to tell him that I know what things look like from above now. There's so much I want to tell him, because I know he'll understand.”
― Shawn Klomparens, Jessica Z.

“These golf people seem unnaturally obsessed. They dress kind of funny too, and it's become a running joke for Gretchen and I to e-mail the most ridiculous golfing pictures back and forth to each other. Sometimes she adds hysterical captions. She never puts them on PitchBitch, though. We can't threaten the gravy train.”
― Shawn Klomparens, Jessica Z.

“We move out over the ocean, and …I am looking straight down at the waves underneath me. The mid-morning sun is low and each crest flashes silver, silver, until it crashed into the rocky beach….and turns to foam. The rocks are broken into sand, and each grain …eventually…is broken down further.
And as each grief crashes into us, we are broken too. We are rendered down and broken apart. Maybe some scientist could determine our ages by the size and number of pieces into which we’ve been broken? Maybe she could look at our pieces and measure the weight in impact of every grief and joy and agony. Maybe.
”
― Shawn Klomparens, Jessica Z.

“I start to run, and my nose fills with the smell of rain and wet earth. I run along the shoulder of the highway in an easy rhythm, and the rain gathers up on my forehead and eyebrows; it flows down my face, it drips from the tip of my nose. There is wet dirt, a puddle in the gravel, new grass pushing through old in the ditch. Violets grow along the edge of the road. To my right, the Little Jib River flows brown and swollen to the lake. The water moves ceaselessly, and I move along with it. To my left, across the road, the rain strips wilted cherry blossoms from the rows and rows of trees, and drops them to the ground.”
― Jon Harrison, The Banks of Certain Rivers

“What is a memory, anyway? Is it an indelible record, unimpeachable, frozen in some synaptic arrangement and stored away for some moment it might be needed in the future? Or is it subject to editing and revision, something plastic that our brains can shape into another form we can handle, something less toxic than the original, something less able to poison us?”
― Jon Harrison, The Banks of Certain Rivers

“Kinder than is necessary. Because it's not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than needed.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“Her departure was a gradual thing, like a watercolor left in the sun, every day fainter until one day the canvas was bare and you had to rely on memory to recapture the image.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“I don’t need my heart anymore, you can have it. Cut it out, put it in a box, bury it in the hard ground, next to you. My eyes are useless too. They only show me a world without you. Color blind, color absent, colorless. And my mind screams, Not fair! Not right. Not what I was promised on the swing set as you pushed me toward the sun. None of the stories you read me schooled me for this. I didn’t learn this lesson in the moon, or on the train, or as a thing to be curious about. So I don’t need my heart anymore, you can have it. Let it be buried, in the hard ground, next to you.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“I stare off into space for a minute. "I just wish my life would go back to the way it was."
"Why?"
"Because I was happy then. Things weren't perfect, but still, I knew where I fit. I knew where I was going."
"And you don't feel that way anymore?"
"No. I feel kind of...lost in the middle of my own life, if that makes any sense.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Forgotten

“Everyone’s path to here is unique, Anne. It’s what you do from here that counts.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Arranged

“If someone figured out a way to bottle woman-been-wronged, they’d make a fortune.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Arranged

“One minute doesn’t erase a thousand.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“It’s hard to find someone you’d rather spend time with than not.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“That I’d been letting life act itself out on me when I should have been directing it.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“Is there a panic button I can hit? Or better yet, a button that will pause this whole scene while I figure out how I want to play it?
But no. That's not how it works in real life.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Forgotten

“Some people are meant to disappear from your life, to remain a memory, a faded possibility. A curiosity. I ought to know. But when curiosity is so easily fulfilled, how do you avoid fulfilling it? A button is pressed and you’re friends again.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“You can quit if you want. If you hate it. If it isn't fun anymore. I'll back you with Dad. But you can't quit just because it's hard. Things are hard for most people. Life is hard.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“But, of course, everyone has regrets. Loose ends. Things they could do if they had more time.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“It’s just how love gets described in the movies. Like in Sleepless in Seattle . . .” This is the movie they showed us last night. “Tom Hanks’s character is musing about why he fell in love with his dead wife, and he says that it was because she could peel an apple in one long strip, or something like that. And I was reading something similar in a book recently, only that was about peeling an orange . . . anyway . . . I’ve just never felt like the way someone peels fruit would be a reason to spend the rest of your life with them.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Spin

“His mouth tastes like Scotch, and feels familiar, like somewhere I've been before.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Forgotten

“And why do the main characters always have to hate each other at the beginning of the movie? Like, hello, red flag. It’s so obvious they’re going to get together.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“All I knew was I had to talk to someone. I had to try to steal someone’s rationality.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“My brain was playing tricks on me, sucking me inward, away from my life, my family, myself.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“First, heal thyself.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Hidden

“Her office is oddly decorated with all things dog. There's a dog calendar, a dog clock, a couple of framed photographs of dogs, a dog leash sitting on the corner of her desk. The only thing missing is the actual dog itself. Or maybe the leash is for me?”
― Catherine McKenzie, Spin

“Ah, the Serenity Prayer. “God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can . . .” For some reason, reciting it never leaves me feeling very serene.”
― Catherine McKenzie, Spin