We All Want Impossible Things Quotes

“Everyone dies, and yet it’s unendurable. There is so much love inside of us. How do we become worthy of it? And, then, where does it go? A worldwide crescendo of grief, sustained day after day, and only one tiny note of it is mine.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“Life is messy. I certainly don’t expect tidiness from yours or anybody else’s.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“One thing I’ve started to suspect about myself is that I’m some kind of confusingly extroverted introvert. I just want to sit here on the couch with a tumblerful of the good booze Alice brought, soak in the music and the conversation, and not talk to anyone. I want to be invisible and lie down on the couch and fall asleep to the muffled sounds of conversation, like a child in the back seat of the car being driven safely through the night by grown-ups who love her.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“What I’m starting to understand, finally, is that the point isn’t to help the people who know how best to ask for help. It’s to be helpful.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“Every year, ever since the girls were born, I have blown out the candles on my birthday cake and wished for just this. Everything I have already. No loss. I can’t spare anybody is what I always think. But, then, people must be spared. That is the whole premise of this life, of this time we have with each other.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“I love you, but you want impossible things, Ash,” he said, finally, and it was true. It still is. I want impossible things.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“All of that caretaking,” I say. I lean back so I can look at her. I’m crying too. Crying and talking. “All of it’s in his bones. It’s the actual stuff of his body and brain. The placenta you made from scratch. Your milk from nursing him. All those pancakes and school-lunch sandwiches, all of that food and care.” She’s looking into my face, nodding, even though I am fully winging it now, panicking, words pouring out like I’m a hose on the weepy consolation setting. “Everything you’ve ever fed him,” I say. “His whole self is made completely out of your love.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“Fly, be free! I want to say. I want to say, Stay with me forever! Come to think of it, these are the two things I want to say to everyone I love most.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“In the end there’s more beauty in the imperfection.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“I want you to be crazy about me,” I’d said, and he said, “You want that. I know. But you also want space to think and work. Freedom. You want to rest sometimes. You’d hate me if I tried to contain you.” He’d sighed, pressed his lips into a thin line. “I love you, but you want impossible things, Ash,” he said, finally, and it was true. It still is. I want impossible things.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“We were trying to understand, then, what her life was about to become. I think we’re still trying to understand.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“I walk down the stairs to lean against her. “I’m sorry,” I say vaguely. I’m not entirely sure what for. Being a weirdo, being a skank. Being the happy-saddest person who ever lived. “Don’t be, darling,” she says. “Life is messy. I certainly don’t expect tidiness from yours or anybody else’s.” She kisses the side of my head. Then she wraps her arms around me because I’m crying. Honey’s got an arm draped over Belle’s shoulder, but he uses his other hand to tuck my hair behind my ear. Everything is unspooling inside me now. If I were a ball of yarn, I’d be just a stringy tangle on the floor. If I were a reservoir, I’d be overflowing my banks. Who I really need to talk to about all of this, of course, is Edi. “She’s going to miss everything now,” I sob. “And you’re going to miss her,” my mother says. “Such lucky girls, both of you.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“Is it better to have loved and lost? Ask anyone in pain and they’ll tell you no. And yet. Here we are, hurling ourselves headlong into love like lemmings off a cliff into a churning sea of grief. We risk every last thing for our heart’s expansion, even when that expanded heart threatens to suffocate us and then burst.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“They lost all of their teeth under this roof! They lost all of their baby fat! They turned skinny and pimply and furious, and then sleek and kind and hilarious.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“I just mean that Edith doesn’t want to die—she’s not fully at peace with the idea—so she might not come to anything that feels satisfying. She might not make meaning of her life and death. She might, of course. I mean, we always hope for that because it makes us feel better. But she might not.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“It’s monstrous. It is too much to take. Why do we even do this—love anybody? Our dumb animal hearts.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“It’s the anticipation I can’t handle. Loss lurks around every corner, and how do we prepare?”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“Inside the hospice, Belle glows like a shiny ambassador from the land of youth. It feels almost indecent to bring her.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“Everything you’ve ever fed him,” I say. “His whole self is made completely out of your love.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“The hospice fridge is filled with cream: ice cream, sour cream, heavy cream, cans and cans of whipped cream. There’s definitely a now or never feeling about food around here, and it makes you wonder what you think you might be waiting for in your own life. I mean, crusty, gooey mac and cheese? Thickly frosted éclairs? Velveeta melted over a plate of potato chips—what the nurses call the house nachos? Eat your kale and blueberries and whatever else, but go ahead. Have some of the good stuff now too. We”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“Marriage confused me. Some days it seemed to be just an endless sequence of body functions: the fan turned on in the smelly bathroom; the sound of someone clipping their toenails into the trash can; a waxy Q-tip on the counter; a scrim of shaved-off hairs around the sink. Another person’s waste sloughing off incessantly! It can really drain a person of the will to live.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“If there’s a metaphor for our friendship, it might be this. The blind faith. The absolute dependability. The love like a compass, its north always true.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“Grief is crashing over our heads like a tsunami, this miraculous soul is about to be homeless,”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“not a messy anatomical chest full of longing. Full of blood and beating and grief.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“Everywhere, behind closed doors, people are dying, and people are grieving them. It’s the most basic fact about human life—tied with birth, I guess—but it’s so startling too. Everyone dies, and yet it’s unendurable. There is so much love inside of us. How do we become worthy of it? And, then, where does it go? A worldwide crescendo of grief, sustained day after day, and only one tiny note of it is mine.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“Mostly," she says, "I'm just really, really thirsty." The body and its petty demands! Grief is crashing over our heads like a tsunami, this miraculous soul is about to be homeless, but thirst is thirst. So I fill her night - this one, beautiful night, the only here and now we've ever got - with Sprite.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“She's leaving behind the shell of her human flesh, molting like an invisible butterfly, disappearing.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“Not knowing seems to be all I know anymore.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“I can still feel all that rage sloshing around. Even the word wife. I just picture all of us stirring oatmeal at the stove, knee-deep in everybody’s diapers and feelings.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things

“I want to be invisible and lie down on the couch and fall asleep to the muffled sounds of conversation, like a child in the back seat of the car being driven safely through the night by grown-ups who love her.”
― Catherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things