Catherine Gilbert Murdock Quotes

Why was it that jam always coated me so?

Love is the hardest thing in the world.

But you know, even worrying about haircuts couldn't depress me. Because every time I started sinking low, I'd just remember about football. All this time I'd thought I wanted to be a trainer, when it turned out I wanted to be a player instead. I saw something I wanted to do and I decided to do it. The feeling of freedom this gave me - I can't even describe it. It was my decision. I chose it. I am not a cow.

I saw something I wanted to do and I decided to do it. The feeling of freedom it gave me- I can't even describe it. It was my decision. I chose it.

If in this narrative I have not yet paid Queen Sophia adequate consideration, particularly given the unrelenting domination the woman would soon claim over every single element of my life, I offer this simple yet honest explanation: for fifteen unbroken years, my mother had toiled to protect me from the woman. It is remarkable, as I reflect upon my childhood, how utterly unaware I was of this situation while it transpired, the truth coming to my notice only in despondent hindsight.

It kind of struck me how great it would be to go out with a guy that size. And if you, you know, got tired of dating him, you could always use him as a house or something.

Bend like the sapling you are. With time we shall find your oaken core.

According to Montagne legend, the mountain has forever been the abode of giants. Long ago a traveling pair of sorcerers, husband and wife, scaled the cliff into the valley, and the woman cured the giants' chilblains with ointments and the gift of fire. In gratitude, the giants built Chateau de Montagne out of the living rock of Ancienne, and from that castle the couple founded the kingdom of Montagne, using their magic to shield the country and its people from harm.

When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.

Reasonableness is the byproduct of a scientific mind.

My downfall, inevitably, was triggered by food.

So it was that my life passed from the joyous realm of heaven to the choking and inescapable tortures of hell.

And have your mother put my head on a stake? Do you have any notion what that would do to my handsome good looks?

A princess," (Queen Sophia) would proclaim, "requires a graceful and willowy carriage, not the appetite of a swineherd.

I ultimately decided to hold my tongue and settle instead for the comfort of ignorance. Not knowing the truth, I retained hope, and that hope I held like a smooth warm stone against my heart.

Talk Back? That's really what it's called? You're supposed to walk into some church basement and say, 'I'm here to learn how to Talk Back'?

Night soil oozed onto my cloak, and I wondered why all my adventures involved foul odour. Why could I not for once frolic in a meadow of flowers, or escape in a hamper of fresh laundry? No, I must endure night soil and prison cells and unwashed soldiers ...

I swear, every person I know gets far more satisfaction from doing good deeds than receiving them. Maybe that's the whole point in the end, all of us putting up with good deeds, tolerating them as best we can, counting the minutes until we have the opportunity to reciprocate.

The situation collapsed completely at dinner one September evening. Perhaps it was the full moon that drove me to madness, or the gnawing, relentless emptiness of my heart. Whatever the trigger, the powder had been well packed, and my explosion, though shocking, was not altogether unexpected.

So break up with him.

How many times I have wondered what my fate might have been had I accompanied my parents that rainy spring morning. Such musings, I recognise, are more than a trifle insane, for envisioning what might have been had no more connection to our own true reality than a lunatic has to a lemon.

You watch pro ball and those guys spend so much time with their hands on each other's rear ends, you'd think they were feeling for diamonds or something.

How could I pretend to be someone else when I was already failing at being the person I already was?

Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase "happily ever after." Yet every couple I have ever known would agree that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied companionship. Yet these come at no small effort, and the girl who reads such fiction dreaming her troubles will end ere she departs the altar is well advised to seek at once a rational women to set her straight.

And if I didn't, I'd spend the rest of my life wondering who I could have turned into if only I'd had the guts to try.

That is the delusion of which I speak! You wish the joys of true love upon every milkmaid and stable boy in your land, and yet you consign yourself and another to lives of pure misery that you might possess a well-proportioned ballroom.

Despite all my public misconduct, in the past year, I had learned the Elemental spells, the Doppelschläferin, and the preparation and flying of a magic broom; I had survived two months as prisoner of war, saving the life of captain Johanne in the process; I had escaped the dungeons of Fortress Drachensbett, and after an arduous journey successfully reunited with my double, so preserving her, and all Montagne, from Prince Flonian's rapacity, I would somehow master the despicable art of being a princess.

His cell phone rang, one of those extremely annoying songs that cell phone owners are so in love with because for some reason they can't tolerate a plain old-fashioned ring.

With that, I hurled the slipper at him, not caring if I caused his decapitation. (I did not.) Marshaling what little dignity I yet possessed, I stomped down the corridor - challenging indeed with one shoe - and around the corner. I lay awake for hours. The prince had no right, not one, to indict me so, and if I had held the slightest hope of the book's assistance, I would have climbed at once to my wizard room for a spell with which to punish him. Death, perhaps, or humiliation. A croaking frog would be nice, particularly a frog that retained Florian's dark eyes. I should keep it in a box and poke it occasionally with a stick; that would be satisfying indeed.

Today exists between yesterday and tomorrow.

Still, I couldn't get over Dad calling those farmers. People might think helping is hard, but really that's the easy part; just look how good it makes people feel. Look how happy all those Red Bend ladies were about chipping in. It's the asking that's so painful. It takes real courage, real strength, to say you're not strong enough to do it alone. Mom must really be hurting for Dad to be so brave.

So what if Brian made me feel like fireworks were going off inside me. He could also make me feel like a big fat clod of heartsick dirt. It was like he could take any emotion I had and make it ten times stronger. Which is great when it's happiness but pretty darn awful if it's anything sad.

But it turns out that even if I don't talk a lot, when it's something that matters I still have a lot to say.

Everyone's scared. So scared they can't sleep sometimes. Or eat. Or keep their weight on."
"Then why bother playing?" I asked. It was a whisper, this question.
"Because. You love the game. You love the people you play with. You love winning, maybe. You love that one moment when you get it right ... I dunno. Why do you play?"
"Because," I whispered, "it's who I am."
Sounds like a good reason to me.

And it occurred to me that the reason she makes it work, probably, is because she's so comfortable with herself. And you know, that's not such a bad notion, in the whole life-lesson business. Being comfortable with yourself. Because if you're not okay with who you are, why should anyone else be?

As for the queen, I had no more interest in her company than in plunging my face into a nest of hornets.

Oh. Listen, this is really hard for me ... "
"What is?"
"You know. Being liked." I started to cry. I couldn't help it.

Lord Frederick had been a stalwart member of the Montagne court since at least the time of my grandfather; this I knew. Even more, he had the marvellous ability to pull peppermint drops from my ears, which used to entertain me for hours.

I'd promised myself that I'd really work on talking more, talking about uncomfortable things, because I could see from Brian how well things could work out if you did.

The truth that our futures are so often determined not by some grand design or deliberate strategy but by an ordinary run-of-the-mill head cold.

I mulled on the tower-bound princess whose lover employed her hair as rope. My own curly locks – one of my better features, I will admit, better being a relative term – hung just past my shoulders, and barely draped over the windowsill.

It was like he was in a contest to see who could do the least work, only he was the only contestant.