Lost Lambs Quotes

“Late capitalism did its job of convincing Catherine that she was insufficient, an empty void, and thus needed to slowly fill that void with products that made her face smell like parsley or coconuts.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Shove that shit down. So deep down it’s out of sight. Don’t spend another moment on it. Make it go from a reality to a memory to a feeling you sometimes get on winter days. Then let that feeling drive you to do somethin’ great.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“She was a troublemaker with no origin myth. No trauma pointed to her ennui, her restlessness.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Control what people do and you’re a king. Control how people think and you’re a god.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“That’s all just talk. People make up stories to cope with the mundanity of life.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Maybe the snake didn't eat the cupcake," Wes said. "Maybe he was just shaped that way. Maybe he was just a different kind of snake.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Marriage is just an institution that informs the tax code.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Catherine had briefly wondered, as all women do their first time alone with a man, if he was going to murder her.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Catherine missed the days when you could slam a phone down into its cradle. Clicking a button—an image of a button, really—did not offer the same satisfaction.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Louise was so sick of being average. If not profound beauty, inner or not, couldn’t she at least have generational wealth or a major disability?”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Think about life as a fence,” said Miss Winkle. “And each time we transgress, each time we hurt one another, we must tap a nail into that fence. When we’re ready, we can pull those nails out of the fence. But even still, there will be holes.”
“Can the holes be fixed?” asked Bud. “Can they be patched?”
Miss Winkle shook her head. Bud’s shoulders sunk.
“But it’s alright,” said Miss Winkle. “The fence is still standing. The light can shine through.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“But he was already full.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“They called people “sellouts” and “sheep” and vowed to be different, even though what they were doing—what they were beginning to do—was utterly conventional: falling in love. Their parents had done it and their grandparents had done it, their teachers and neighbors, poor people and presidents, bohemians and churchgoers, the very denizens of the Bible had done it, but Bud and Catherine’s love was different because it was theirs and that made it transgressive and dissident and ineffable.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“When a lamb strays, it's usually lost to wolves. Vulnerable without its flock. But sometimes, just sometimes, if it's lucky, it finds a new one.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“If life is nothing and death is nothing, why make a lateral move?”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“As a child, looking up at the contrails, she used to think that God had dragged his fingernails across the sky.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Bud remembered a Czech word that his garage rock band had once toiled over as a potential name, Lítost, which translated nearly as “the humiliated despair we feel when someone reminds us, through their accomplishments, of everything that has gone wrong in our lives.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Women are ethereal creatures, thought Bud, always one foot in another world.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Why kill myself? thought Louise. If life is nothing and death is nothing”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“They are less depictions of something than depictions about something. You know what I mean? These pussies are moments in time.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“The ________ gnome was a childhood staple, responsible for the inexplicably lost. The sweater gnome, the mouth guard gnome. Then Abigail started dating her first boyfriend and Harper told their parents that the virginity gnome had snuck in. That put a stop to the bit.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Pianos”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Bud once heard that macaws mated with one partner for life. This felt downright shameful. Even the birds had better relationships than Bud.”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Some ice floated in the vodka. Diluted, but by which daughter? Abigail? Harper? Louise was so quiet, but it was always the quiet ones, wasn’t it?”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Louise was in a prison of her own mundanity. She’d taken to intentionally throwing out the metal forks with the food scraps when she scraped her dinner plate”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“But this was an inner beauty pageant”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Catherine missed the days when you could slam a phone down into its cradle. Clicking a button—an image of a button”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“I’ve seen some shit in my time,” said Marshall. “You don’t go overseas and not see some shit. May I offer a word of advice?” “I know”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“When you wear that much makeup”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

“Harper sat down next to Bud. He took her hand. “You were right”
― Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs