Cath Crowley Quotes

Does anyone believe in that? That souls can transmigrate?'
'I do,' says George. 'I think souls can be in books, too.

I spent the weekend after our date wishing I could stab him with my fluffy-duck pen and staring at the phone hoping he'd call. Dating is a very tricky business.

Get up, Henry,' he says. 'You're fermenting. Tell him he's fermenting, George.

They don't wait for something to happen. They wait to happen to something.

Why do want to find him so bad?' I ask after a while, but she's not listening. I watch her a bit
longer. 'Why do you want to find him so bad?' I ask again.
She blinks and comes out of her dream. She flicks the band on her wrist. 'I just do.' - Ed Skye

She looks at me and at Dave. She looks out the curtain and strums her guitar. "Yeah," she says. "Oh yeah. This I can do.

Life is the big scheme; death is the little one at the end.

words do matter. They're not pointless. If they were pointless then they couldn't start revolutions and they wouldn't change history and they wouldn't be the things that you think about every night before you go to sleep. If they were just words we wouldn't listen to songs,

How do you feel?" Lola asks.
"Like I've just had every single one of my organs harvested while I'm still alive."
"Good to know you're not overreacting," she says.

I love you too, I say. No wonder the whole world writes songs about those words.

He looks so stupid that it cancels out my
stupid so I give in and ride and he runs
and gets on the bike after only two tries.

I hear people talking about the feeling they get when they pain stuff in illegal places. Leo says he gets this fast-moving fear swinging through him, running from his heart to everyplace under his skin. I pain to get the thoughts in me out. I paint so it gets quiet under my skin.

I'll never throw these small things away. There will never be a time when I don't want them, all the tiny parts of Cal that made a life.

When wanting collides with getting, that's the moment of truth. I want to collide.

I am filled with the thought that there's nothing more thrilling than all those things in your future, waiting to be known.

If a person wants to spend forever with you, that's Love.

I told him he was dreaming. He told me dreaming's the only way to get anywhere.

I never fell in love with her so I guess the part of the brain that controls love doesn't respond to being called a dick.'
'For your sake, I'm hoping no part of your brain responds to being called a dick.'
'Fair point.

Everything in the world's got a voice; most people don't hear hard enough is all. Sunrise sounds like slow chords dripping from my guitar this morning. Sad chords, in B-flat.

The past is with me; the present is here. The future is unmapped and changeable. Ours for the imagining: spreading out before us. Sunlight filled, deep blue, and the darkness.

A graffiti moon cut by the shadow of power lines. A prisoner moon, Leo wrote.

She's the psychic but she can't see what's coming up: the intersection of hurt and more hurt. The blind spot there is a killer.

Second hand books have a way of travelling, sure. But what travels forward can come back.

To win a little you have to risk something. To win big, you have to risk it all.

The memories are in the words. And from that the strange thought comes that my memories are trapped in all the copies of this poem, and so everyone who's reading it, no matter what copy, has my memories without knowing it.

Mum and I were both there at the moment that Cal died, and sometimes I worry that seeing that has altered something so fundamental about us. Sometimes I worry we lost some of our humanness that day, and It's not coming back.

Being different is the only way to live

A psychic laywer is a lethal combination in a mother.

But I don't believe that the future gives us signs. I think that we look back and read the past with the present in our eyes.

We're not spending the night looking for ourselves.

Her eyes always bothered me when we were kids. They still do. They make mine ache trying to see where they end.

I don't understand,' Dad says. 'You were such happy children.'

'I was never a happy child,' George says.

'True, but Henry was.'

'I'm not anymore. It's actually hard to imagine how my life could be any more shit at this point,' I say, and George holds up the copy of the book she's reading. The Road.

'Okay. Sure. It could get more shit if there was some kind of world-ending event and people started eating each other. But that's a whole different shit scale. On your average human-emotion scale, my life is registering as the shittiest of the shit.

Some of my most beautiful glass pieces have
cracks running through them and I like them anyway because of the colours.

Bye bye binary. For gender, for sexuality, for everything. ... Lots of people can like lots of people. And could everyone please get over it and update their idea of normal.

I spray the sky fast. Eyes ahead and behind. Looking for cops. Looking for anyone I don't want to be here. Paint sails and the things that kick in my head scream from can to brick. See this, see this. See me emptied onto a wall.

Do many guys ask you out twice?"
"Only the ones with balls.

I don't believe that the future gives us signs. I think that we look back and read the past with the present in our eyes...Maybe you read to look forward, and start reading the future.

You've always called it a store, ever since we were kids. It's a bookshop. It's not like some other retail store. It might be the same in a whole lot of ways, but this bookshop is special. Books are special. Books are important. Words are important. Words matter, in fact. They're not pointless, as you've suggested. If they were pointless, then they couldn't start revolutions and they wouldn't change history. If they were just words, we wouldn't write songs or listen to them. We wouldn't beg to be read to as kids. If they were just words, then stories wouldn't have been around since before we could write. We wouldn't have learned to write. If they were just words, people wouldn't fall in love because of them, feel bad because of them, ache because of them, and stop aching because of them.

What are you reading?' he asks this afternoon.

'Kafka's Metamorphosis,' George says, without looking up.

'And what's it about?'

'Guy turns into a giant bug and eventually dies.'

'Not exactly life-affirming,' Martin observes.

'Life isn't exactly life-affirming,' George says.

'How have you been able to read so many books?' he asks, and she looks up from Kafka, her thumb marking the page. 'I'm a weird girl in high school. I've had some time to kill.

You're not like other girls, you know that, right?' Ed asks.
'I've been aware of the problem,' I tell him.

You can't drive them around in the getaway van.' 'How about we don't call it the getaway van? People might get suspicious.' 'So what should we call it?' 'How about the van?' 'It doesn't change what it is and that it's a shitty thing to do. Someone might see them in it.

I had a dream where Cal told me he could see the world from above,' I tell Henry. 'He said the seconds were pouring off people, tiny glowing dots pouring from their skins, only no one could see them.'

'Beautiful dream,' Henry says.

'Is it? Wouldn't it be better if the seconds were adding up? Do we have a set amount of seconds to live when we're born or an unknowable number?'

'An unknowable number,' Henry says.

'How do you know?'

'I don't. I believe.' He rolls over and looks at me. 'I believe I am adding up to something.

I can't believe you're still mad at me," Ed says.
"You grabbed my arse."
"You broke my nose."
"You broke his nose?" Jazz asks. "You grabbed her arse?"
"It was two years ago-"
"Two years, four months, and eight days," I tell him.
"-and I was fifteen, and I slipped and she broke my nose."
"Wait a minute. How do you slip onto someone's arse?"
Jazz asks.
"I meant slipped up. I slipped up and she broke my nose."
"You're lucky that's all I broke," I say.
"You're lucky I didn't call the police."
Leo, Dylan, and Daisy slid into the booth. "Did you guys know that Lucy broke Ed's nose? Jazz asks.
Ed closes his eyes silently and bangs his head on the wall.

Everything is what it is. I just wish it were something else.

Love of the things that make you happy is steady too--books, words, music, art--these are lights that reappear in a broken universe.

Sometimes science isn't enough. Sometimes you need the poets.

Ed looks at me like he wishes I'd disappear and if I had the choice I'd grant that wish; I'd turn into smoke and blow away. I want to sit on the other side of the table from him so he doesn't think I'm interested, but there's no room on the other side so I sit as far away from him as I can and try to have an out-of-body experience. This couldn't get more awkward if we all tried.
"How about we get some air?" Leo asks Jazz, and they walk outside. Daisy follows them and Dylan follows her. Okay, it could get more awkward if we all tried.

He's got this way of smiling that makes me want to throw him down and kiss him. And yeah, I know that any guy I have to throw down to kiss probably isn't Mr. Right. Still. I can dream.

Remember
Love doesn't make the world go round
Sex makes it spin for a second or two
If you're lucky
So do chips, sausage rolls and girls in short skirts
Remember
Love
Lays its fingers on your heart
And holds it
Under water
Remember that
When the next girl smiles

It was about friendship, and pink vans, and doing the wrong thing, but still finding redemption in the end.

Luce,' she says, 'I don't want my diary entry tomorrow to be: Stayed out all night. Went to prison. I have this urge to go home and watch TV with my parents and be completely boring.

We watch her walk into the spotlight she's been been hiding from most of her life. Sure, friendship is all about believing in someone so hard they believe it, too. Sure, it's about trust. But if anyone hurts her tonight, it's about ripping them apart with my bare hands and really enjoying it.

Ed? Are you alive?'
'Yes..and that's genuinely surprising
since your bike went over me about
halfway down. You're a very dangerous
girl to date.'
'We're not on a date.

The End of Her

She's sitting on the hill
Hoping for a day
When her dreams don't hit the road
She's throwing rocks and yelling
At the sky and at the weather
She's yelling at forever
That's been breathing on her neck

She can't start with him again
He's got the end of her
He can't give her ocean
And he can't give her her

He's staring where she sat
It's the plastic that reminds him
Of something that they had
He says, "I'd give up sex forever
If she'd say we're back together"
But he's making promises he knows
It'd kill them both to keep

She can't start with him again
He's got the end of her
He can't give her ocean
And he can't give her her

I take my hands off the break and let go. The trees and the fences mess together and the concrete could be the sky and the sky could be the concrete and the factories spread out before me like a light-scattered dream.

Open skies painted above painted doorways and painted birds skimming across bricks trying to fly away. Little bird, what are you thinking? You come from a can.

And then we're at that moment when you both go and get what you want or you both go back. The moment when you say, Stuff being scared; what's on the other side is better. That moment when you inch closer to each other little by little, till your skin starts and ends in the same place. Till your faces get so close your lips start and end in the same place, too. Till you taste milk shake and salt and sugar days and the world spins and the stars sound like harmonicas.

The definition of crazy is doing something close to the same thing twice and expecting a different end.

I need the shade of blue that rips your heart out. You don't see that type of blue around here.

I feel like the universe cheated Cal and cheated us along with him," I say now.
Before Cal died, Mum would have explained calmly and logically that the universe was all existing matter and space- 10 billion light-years in diameter, consisting of galaxies and solar systems, stars, and the planets. All of which simply do not have the capacity to cheat a person of anything.
Tonight she lights another cigarette. "It did," she says, and blows smoke at the stars.

Where have you gone, my love? After ten years together I think knowing this is more than my due. Write me one line to let me know where you are. So that I do not wonder, for the rest of our lives when I imagine you, what is the background to your face.

Do you ever hear from your
dad?' I ask.
'Uh-uh. Mum said they had the biggest
fight before he left. She was sixteen and telling him about me and he left a dad shaped hole in the wall.

I think back to the night Leo talked to me from the floor, telling me he didn't like sleeping because that's when he dreamt. Telling me because in the dark it felt like we weren't awake, weren't even real.

I nod so much there's a nodding festival going on.

I took the money and passed the box across the counter and said politely, 'Your choice of colour
really lacks style.' I smiled and Beth laughed and the guy asked to see my manager.
I got Bert and he leant over the box and looked at the paint and said, 'Ed was being polite. Your
choice of colour is shit.

He's one of the good guys,' she always said.'Just sometimes he's working undercover

Serial killer aren't creative."
"Watch a little Dexter and get back to me on that.

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Where's the fire, Lucy Dervish?'
In me. Under my skin.

The stars are on the inside. They are effing beautiful.

The music kicks in and maybe the bad times kick out and maybe the world's a little better for them than it was before.

I look over at Ed. He's staring out the window giving Leo the thumbs-down. I wait till he's looking at me, then I give him two fingers up. He gives me two fingers back. I give him the middle finger. He gives it back to me. I don't know any more signs, so I make up one. Three fingers. Take that, mister. He sticks up four. I call your four and raise you five. He skips straight to ten and does something with his thumb that disturbs me. I bounce my hands on my lap. Ed bounces his lap right back.

I'm like Courtney Love without the drugs, right? Edgy. Full of unspoken feeling.'
'You're a brick when the guy is real and in front of you.

Sometimes I wish I was a guy. Life's so much easier for them.

Humans are strong, but if you hit them at the right point, they destruct.

Gorilla, a guy who got his name because he's hairy and because his arms are so long his knuckles scrape the floor. He's grinning and moving closer and she's blocked in on all sides by a mass of bodies. I look at her and him. I look at the window. I think back to our date. She can always break his nose if he gets too friendly. I jump through, land on the grass, and turn around. Who am I kidding? I want to see it if she breaks his nose.

Well, all girls called Beth are arse grabbers.

I think she likes post-apocalyptic fiction so much because she's genuinely happy at the thought that the world might end.

You know who Mr. Darcy is?"
"I exist, therefore I know who Mr. Darcy is.

I didn't tell her what I'd done; I told her he wasn't who I thought he'd be. Mum stroked my hair and said, Sometimes they aren't. Sometimes they make you vomit.

Real is better, The truth is better. Painful but better.

You say one more word to anyone and I'm telling people you cried in here tonight because you thought Daisy was breaking up with you.' 'You wouldn't.' Leo's phone rings. 'He would,' he says, laughing as he answers it.

It's a different kind of missing. You're trying to remember, and he's trying to forget.

It takes a lot of wanting to get out of a place like this, though. It takes wanting so bad it's all you care about, all you dream about, all you breathe. Some days I think it takes more wanting that I've got.

You're funny, which you can't be if you're not smart. Dad says it's harder to make someone laugh than it is to make them smile.

We were the only three people awake in a world half asleep and the air felt heavy with maybe.

Kiss me, I think. Go on, kiss me. At least grab my arse.

People keep calling it an accident. That snake bit me on purpose. I've named it Sneaky. Sneaky had it all planned. I saw its face.

Don't go confusing stupidity with guts." -Bert

Shakespeare," she says, the light from the bar glinting off her pink hair, "that girl is not for you."

"She's my soul mate," I tell her.

"Then I am worried about your soul," she says.

seems like a lot of trouble for a boat that's going nowhere.

Did you know that we're made up of the same matter as stars? We are nuclear energy exploding.

Love and romance are things worth waiting for.

I wonder how she could forget about it, a thing like that. And I wonder how she can go on living if she doesn't.

I know nothing about love.

I can't tell Beth about me being Shadow. She'd get uptight about me doing something she thinks is dangerous."
That's not why you won't tell her. You won't tell her because what's on that wall is what's going on in there." He tapped my head.

I should tell her to leave. I should maintain what dignity I can, which isn't much considering I'm wearing a blanket and the smell of last night's drinking. But my family is pretty shit at dignity as well as love, so I think: fuck dignity. Dignity is not in my genes

The night didn't go so well because I broke his nose, which was an accident that happened when I hit him in the face because he touched my arse.

Asking's the easy bit. Then there's everything that comes after.

I'm fond of Derek Walcott too. I could eat his poem "Love After Love." Just peel the words off the page and stuff them in my mouth.

Were you in love with Emma?" I ask.
"I was hard-core obsessed," he says without thinking about it. "Not in love."
"What's the difference?"
He's about to throw a stone at ta yard light but stops. "Prison," he says, and puts the stone in his pocket.