The Madwoman Upstairs Quotes

“Are there any leading men in your life?"

"Several, but they're all fictional.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“More than anything, I began to hate women writers. Frances Burney, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Browning, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf. Bronte, Bronte, and Bronte. I began to resent Emily, Anne, and Charlotte—my old friends—with a terrifying passion. They were not only talented; they were brave, a trait I admired more than anything but couldn't seem to possess. The world that raised these women hadn't allowed them to write, yet they had spun fiery novels in spite of all the odds. Meanwhile, I was failing with all the odds tipped in my favor. Here I was, living out Virginia Woolf's wildest feminist fantasy. I was in a room of my own. The world was no longer saying, "Write? What's the good of your writing?" but was instead saying "Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“It was the sort of library you'd marry a man for.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“The great reward given to intelligent people is that they can invent all the rules and equate any dissent with stupidity.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“A new adaptation of Jane Eyre came out every year, and every year it was exactly the same. An unknown actress would play Jane, and she was usually prettier than she should have been. A very handsome, very brooding, very 'ooh-la-la' man would play Rochester, and Judi Dench would play everyone else.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“I realized that my life of late had consisted of far too much dialogue and not enough exposition. I imagined an angry, bespectacled English teacher slashing his pen through the transcript of my life, wondering how someone could possibly say so much and think so little.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“I call that creativity," Orville said. "The purpose of literature is to teach you how to THINK, not how to be practical. Learning to discover the connective tissue between seemingly unrelated events is the only way we are equipped to understand patterns in the real world.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“The curtains were blood-red and drawn. This was not an office. It was a small library, two storeys high, with thin ladders and impractical balconies and an expansive ceiling featuring a gaggle of naked Greeks. It was the sort of library you'd marry a man for.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“Isn't there some truth in all fiction?" "There's some fiction in all truth too.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“Nothing, I learned, brings you into the present quite like holding hands. The past seemed irrelevant; the future, unnecessary.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“If, however, we treat the madwoman as a sane woman who has been locked up, then we force ourselves to acknowledge what did exist in the Brontës’ world: generations of women, who, silent and confined, reined in their passions and lived lives of seclusion.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“[T]o tell a good story, you need courage. Courage to fully become someone else, even if -- and especially if -- that person was a more vulnerable version of yourself.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“Are there any leading men in your life?'
'Several, but they're all fictional.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“We entered a vast, bottomless silence. I scrambled for better conversation topics. This all would have been far less stressful in the movie version of our lives. The long silences would have been edited out.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“There was no romantic ending for Charlotte, but that's where writing your own novel can be so useful.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“His expression was impassive. Somewhere, I just knew, he must have a slew of illegitimate children, all named Bartholomew.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“My father used to say that all protagonists were versions of the author who wrote them—even if it meant the author had to acknowledge a side of himself that he did not know existed. It just required courage.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“An imagination left alone in the dark can be a terrible thing.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“Once a book has left the brain of the author, it took on a life of its own, and served as the only liaison between the reader and the author. If you read carefully, the book could tell you all sorts of secrets-sometimes about its characters, and sometimes about its creator.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“Regret is made obsolete by the story you tell.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“You'd be amazed to discover all the tangible things that can come out of dreams." "Like drool?”
― catherine lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“Never underestimate the sacrifices you will make for love . . .”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“I had injected more of myself than I had ever intended into our nonexistent relationship. Now I would have to relocate the bits and pieces of myself that I had lost, and put myself back together, like a waterlogged puzzle whose pieces didn't quite fit anymore.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“When you are older, you will realize that the things you feel to be true don't require verbal confirmation.”
― catherine lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“This was not a novel. It was a force of nature. Here, in my hands, was the collective imagination of a million teenage girls. Jane Eyre was one of the most famous novels ever written . . . It was the reason that women today secretly fantasized about mystery, danger, and brooding men. Jane Eyre was a twisted Cinderella story . . .”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“The fiction feels more real than the reality.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“But on this point, I think I have said sufficient.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“You’re determined to honor your pain because you think it defines you.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“People evaporated in alcohol, the way people evaporated in dreams.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“Passion. There it was, my least favorite word. It was the elusive—yes, meaningless—term people used when they wanted to believe they were more human than other humans.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs