Cath > Cath's Quotes

“It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing. What is most beautiful is least acknowledged. What is worth dying for is barely noticed.”
― Laura McBride, We Are Called to Rise

“Hate is a terrible thing. It's a wasteful, stupid emotion. You can hate someone with all your heart, but it'll never do them a bit of harm. The only person it hurts is you. You can spend your days hating, letting it eat away at you, and the person you hate will go on living just the same. So, what's the point?”
― Stuart Neville, The Twelve

“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things. You take all you want from a person - sexual chemistry, let's say, or good conversation, or financial support, or intellectual compatibility, or niceness, or loyalty - and you get to pick three of them.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“What are you supposed to do with all the love you have for somebody if that person is no longer there? What happens to all that leftover love? Do you suppress it? Do you ignore it? Are you supposed to give it to someone else?”
― Maggie O'Farrell, After You'd Gone

“Before that she hadn’t realized how fragile happiness was, how if you were careless, you could knock it over and shatter it.”
― Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

“Other people’s judgments were meaningless unless you allowed them to mean something.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Rules of Magic

“There’s something about death that makes people want to live. We wanted to live that day, and I don’t blame us for it. Not anymore.”
― Jill Santopolo, The Light We Lost

“About how you felt unmoored, like no one was connecting you to the earth anymore, like you could float away and no one would notice.”
― Jill Santopolo, The Light We Lost

“I feel sorry for hookers these days—how do they stand out anymore?”
― Michael Robotham, The Secrets She Keeps

“We need the darkness to appreciate the light, and the bumps along the road to stop us falling asleep at the wheel.”
― Michael Robotham, The Secrets She Keeps

“People are only mean when they are threatened.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Everyone on Earth, they'd tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“COVER UP EACH COUGH OR SNEEZE…FOOLS AND TRAITORS SPREAD DISEASE.”
― Emma Donoghue, The Pull of the Stars

“When a woman finally learns that pleasing the world is impossible, she becomes free to learn how to please herself.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“I’m under absolutely no obligation to make sense to you.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Heartbreak is a loss. Divorce is a piece of paper.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“A mother’s heart breaks a million ways in her lifetime.”
― Ashley Audrain, The Push

“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past. —Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)”
― Gabriel Byrne, Walking with Ghosts: A Memoir

“Sunny. Proves rich or poor doesn’t matter, if you ask me. Some people are just born happy. I think that’s the luckiest thing. If you’re sunny inside, you never have to worry about the weather.”
― Nina de Gramont, The Christie Affair

“Time only blunts the pain of loss. It doesn’t erase it.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”
― John Banville, The Sea

“In life you have to learn to count the good days. You have to tuck them in your pocket and carry them around with you. So I’m putting today in my pocket and I’m off to bed.”
― Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club

“People without a sense of humor will never forgive you for being funny.”
― Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club

“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun,”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“Sometimes I think," she said slowly, "that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America, he wouldn't make it past noon.”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“while we may be born into families, it doesn’t necessarily mean we belong to them.”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“Love is a great beautifier.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women