Cath Quotes

You've been looking like this for months." Leo does something strange with his face.
"I don't look like that."
"Yeah. You do."
"I'll look like that if Daisy dumps me, and she'll dump me if she thinks I lied," Dylan says.
"You threw eggs at her head. Odds are she's dumping you anyway." I turn to Leo. "We decided. We said that we weren't telling anyone. We said it was art for art's sake. We said the more people knew, the more chance the cop's pick us up. We said it was you and me, no crew."
"Are you sure I didn't say it was to score girls? ~ Cath Crowley

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

Who's this?" Dad asks when a catchy tune comes on the CD mix I made for the trip. We pass the skeleton tree that never has leaves, no matter what the time of year. Bare gray branches wave us on. "No one you know Dad," I say. It's me. ~ Cath Crowley

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. ~ Cath Crowley

But I love you, and before you say it 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, we wouldn't beg to be read to when we're kids. If they were just words, then they'd have no meaning and stories wouldn't have been around since before humans could write. We wouldn't have learned to write. If they were just words then people wouldn't fall in love because of them, feel bad because of them, ache because of them, stop aching because of them, have sex, quite a lot of the time, because of them. ~ Cath Crowley

Emma Forest?" Jazz asks. "His ex is the girl with the big ... ?"
"That's the one," Daisy tells her.
Jazz looks at her chest. I pat her shoulder. "Guys care about personality too."
"Girls like me started that rumor. ~ Cath Crowley

They don't wait for something to happen. They wait to happen to something. ~ Cath Crowley

What's up with you?" "I'm grounded," I say, just to say something real. "I told Mum to fuck off." He whistles. "Why'd you tell her that? Any other 'off' leaves room for parole. 'Sod off,' 'shove off' - even 'sock off' is still pretty satisfying." "You've told your dad to sock off?" "Once. He said, 'What the fuck is "sock off"? Be a man and tell me to fuck off.'" "So did you tell him?" "No. Because that was the trap. There's never time out for good behavior with 'fuck off. ~ Cath Crowley

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. ~ Cath Crowley

Real is better, The truth is better. Painful but better. ~ Cath Crowley

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. ~ Cath Crowley

There's nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself. Professor Piper ~ Rainbow Rowell

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. ~ Cath Crowley

I like to think of love as being slightly more forgiving than time. ~ Cath Crowley

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

Cath wondered if that youthful face had ever seen a true smile. ~ Marissa Meyer

Your idea of romance requires a corset and a time machine. ~ Cath Crowley

Everything is what it is. I just wish it were something else. ~ Cath Crowley

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. ~ Cath Crowley

as if all the years haven't dulled that moment. She's staring at a spot of air in front of it, and I know, in that spot of air, is her son. ~ Cath Crowley

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 ~ Cath Crowley

It felt good to be writing in her own room, in her own bed. To get lost in the World of Mages and stay lost. To not hear any voices in her head but Simon's and Baz's. Not even her own. This was why Cath wrote fic. For these hours when their world supplanted the real world. ~ Rainbow Rowell

I'm sick of staring at what I want, I thought. I'd do anything to hold it in my hands. ~ Cath Crowley

His mouth dips into that freckle on my neck. Thank you, sun. Thank you, thank you, sun. ~ Cath Crowley

I didn't say you weren't smart. I said you were stupid."
"I guess I'm too dumb to see the difference. ~ Cath Crowley

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

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. ~ Cath Crowley

It's when I'm around some people that my entire vocabulary goes on vacation. Like now, when Dave's walking next to me wearing an old black singlet and board shorts and the tattoo of a bird on his wrist, every single word in my head except "no" and "huh" is lying somewhere on a beack getting a suntan ~ Cath Crowley

Shitness, my sister says, has a momentum that good luck just doesn't have. ~ Cath Crowley

All you god damn dirty Catholics can cath-o-lick my balls. ~ Bo Burnham

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

And we can talk about everything-she's a coder, too. And she got a thirty-four on the ACT (Cath got a thirty-two). ~ Rainbow Rowell

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

I know what irony is.'
'Okay, Alanis. ~ Cath Crowley

And I look at him because he needs to be looked at. He needs to be seen. I hate that he has been on his own for so long painting graffiti moons in the dark keeping quiet about who he really is. ~ Cath Crowley

Let me meet Poet, too, but mainly Shadow. The guy who paints in the dark. Paints birds trapped on brick walls and people lost in ghost forests. Paints guys with grass growing from their hearts and girls with buzzing lawn mowers. A guy who paints things like that is a guy I could fall for. Really fall for ~ Cath Crowley

We are the books we read and the things we love. ~ Cath Crowley

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

What's wrong with Starbucks?"
"It's a big, faceless corporation." He raised a good-natured brow. "So far, they've let me keep my face. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Dale Chihuly." She pulls out her phone and moves close to show me a picture of his work. "It's an eleven meter-long chandelier at the Victoria and Albert Museum."
It looks like one of those tanges she drew, only it's hanging from a ceiling. Blue and yellow. A sideways ocean.
"It looks to me like a feeling pulled straight out from under your skin," she says. ~ Cath Crowley

I hate the thought that you might forget and remember, forget and remember. I think that must be exhausting. You have my phone number, any time you require me to carry you home in a storm. ~ Cath Crowley

That's great, Cath said, trying not to let her face show how much she wanted to kiss and kill him. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Oh, hey. Christmas cups. Did you bring me a gingerbread latte?" Cath looked down guiltily at her cup. "I brought you an eggnog latte," Levi said, holding it out. "And I've been keeping it warm in my mouth. ~ Rainbow Rowell

I don't think you can date a letter like this. A love letter, by definition, should be timeless or what's the point? I love you, but only for that moment and then my love expires? What's the universe's problem with forever? It lets the geese get away with it.'

'The geese?' Rachel asks.

'They mate forever. ~ Cath Crowley

We've basically just met, so I'll say this gently. Are you completely crazy? ~ Cath Crowley

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. ~ Cath Crowley

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

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. ~ Cath Crowley

It's like he's picking up parts of the world and showing them to me, saying, See? It's beautiful. ~ Cath Crowley

The stars are on the inside. They are effing beautiful. ~ Cath Crowley

Your face is flushed, did you know that?"
"Well," she said.
"I'm frustrated."
"Don't make me angry-kiss you."
"Give me the laundry."
"Tempers rising, faces flushed ... This is how it happens."
That made Cath laugh. ~ Rainbow Rowell

You're weird," she said, falling asleep. "But that's okay. It makes me seem normal. ~ Cath Crowley

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. ~ Cath Crowley

Honey, I've watched a lot of 90210. The parents weren't even on the show once Brandon and Brenda went to college. This is your time - you're supposed to going to frat parties and getting back together with Dylan."
"Why does everybody want me to go to frat parties?"
"Who wants you to go to frat parties? I was just kidding. Don't hang out with frat guys, Cath, they're terrible. All they do is get drunk and watch 90210. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Humor without sadness is just pie in the face ~ Cath Crowley

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. ~ Cath Crowley

Nothing can break me unless I let it. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Levi was thin and weedy, and his hair
well, his hair
but everything about him made Cath feel loose and immoral. ~ Rainbow Rowell

And I do not have a weird thing with Simon Snow,' Cath said. 'I'm just really active in the fandom.'
'What the f**ck is a fandom'
'You wouldn't understand,' Cath sighed ~ Rainbow Rowell

We've got secrets coming out our arses and you want to take them to a clairvoyant? ~ Cath Crowley

Maybe he'd already gone to bed. Maybe Cath could just climb into his bed like Goldilocks, and if he woke up, she'd just say "later" and run away. Goldilocks meets Cinderella. ~ Rainbow Rowell

How many people make a career out of writing anyway?' Cath snapped. She felt like everything inside her was snapping. Her nerves. Her temper. Her esophagus. 'I'll write because I love it, the way other people knit or ... or scrapbook. And I'll find some other way to make money. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Cath wanted to work on her own story now. Not the one for class. "Carry on".
"Carry on" was Cath's story. Thousands of people were reading it. Thousands of people wanted her to finish.
This story she was supposed to be writing for class? Only one person cared if she finished it. And that one person wasn't even Cath. ~ Rainbow Rowell

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. ~ Cath Crowley

Kept dreaming of this spot she had on her neck, this tiny country. I wanted to visit, to paint a picture of what I found there, a wall with a road map of her skin. ~ Cath Crowley

A heart, once stolen, can never be taken back. ~ Marissa Meyer

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. ~ Cath Crowley

He already knows what I look like," Cath said. "There's no point in being tricky about it now."
"How is doing your hair
and maybe putting on some lip gloss
being tricky?"
"It's like I'm trying to distract him with something shiny. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Levi's eyebrows were pornographic. If Cath were making this decision just on eyebrows, she would have been "up to his room" a long time ago. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Mom had considered Cath a bit of a hoochie, but the truth was that Cath always opened her heart when she opened her legs. ~ Ruthie Knox

Cath didn't feel, for the moment, like her DNA was a trap ready to snap closed on her. ~ Rainbow Rowell

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. ~ Cath Crowley

Cath ran her fingers along the cover, over the raised gold type.
Then someone else ran right into her, pushing the book into Cath's chest. Pushing two books into her chest. Cath looked up just as Wren threw an arm around her.
"They're both crying," Cath heard Reagan say. "I can't even watch."
Cath freed an arm to wrap around her sister. "I can't believe it's really over," she whispered.
Wren held her tight and shook her head. She really was crying, too. "Don't be so melodramatic, Cath," Wren laughed hoarsely. "It's never over ... It's Simon. ~ Rainbow Rowell

The fact that he misspelled "pumpkin" made Cath wince. ~ Rainbow Rowell

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. ~ Cath Crowley

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. ~ Cath Crowley

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

This room was worse than she thought.
Dark. Remote. Practically in the trees. Practically Enchanted.
A calculus test would feel intimate in here. ~ Rainbow Rowell

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

She left," Cath said, "and she never came back. Who does that?"
"I don't know ... someone who's missing a piece. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Cath didn't feel like a mistake to him. She felt like a beginning. A clean canvas, ready to be painted. A gorgeous new idea. ~ Ruthie Knox

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. ~ Cath Crowley

So this is what water feels like, I think, the second before it can't hold on any longer. This is what it feels like, the second after it lets go. ~ Cath Crowley

Levi was all smiles and fond glances. "Sweetheart, get the door. I've got this."
Cath pressed her fingertips into her temples. "Did you just call me 'sweetheart'?"
He grinned. "It just came out. It felt good. ~ Rainbow Rowell

A psychic laywer is a lethal combination in a mother. ~ Cath Crowley

I am trying to bend the laws of time so I can get here five minutes earlier ~ Cath Crowley

How do you get through any of your classes?" Cath had hours of assigned reading, almost every single night.
"Coping strategies."
"Such as?"
"I record my lectures and listen to them later. Professors usually cover most of what's on the test in class. And I find study groups."
"And you lean on Reagan --"
"Not just Reagan." He grinned. "I'm really good at quickly identifying the smartest girl in every class."
Cath frowned at him. "God, Levi, that's so exploitive."
"How is it exploitive? I don't make them wear miniskirts. I don't call them 'baby.' I just say, 'Hello, smart girl, would you like to talk to me about Great Expectations?'"
"They probably think you like them."
"I do like them."
"If it wasn't exploitive, you'd harass smart boys, too --"
"I do, in a pinch. Do you feel exploited, Cather?" He was still grinning at her over his coffee cup.
"No," she said, "I know that you don't like me."
"You don't know anything."
"So, this is old hat for you? Finding a girl to read a whole book to you?"
He shook his head. "No, this is a first."
"Well, now I feel exploited," she said, setting her drink down and reaching for the book.
"Thank you," he said.
"Chapter seven --"
"I'm serious." Levi pulled the book down and looked at her. "Thank you."
Cath held his eyes for a few seconds. Then she nodded and pulled back the book. ~ Rainbow Rowell

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. ~ Cath Crowley

Too late," Cath said. "And you're not my only friend." "I know - " Reagan rolled her eyes and waved a hand in the air. " - you've got the whole Internet. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Well," she said. "I'm frustrated."
"Don't make me angry-kiss you."
"Give me the laundry."
"Tempers rising, faces flushed ... This is how it happens. ~ Rainbow Rowell

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 ~ Cath Crowley

What would we do together?" Cath asked. "He'd want to go to the bar,and I'd want to stay home and write fanfiction. ~ Rainbow Rowell

He ever offer to walk you home?"
"I've never asked," Cath said quickly. "I've never asked you either."
"That's true," Levi said.
More quiet. More cold.
The air stung Cath's throat when she finally spoke again. "So maybe you shouldn't."
"Don't be ridiculous," Levi said. "That wasn't my point. ~ Rainbow Rowell

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. ~ Cath Crowley

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. ~ Cath Crowley

Sometimes science isn't enough. Sometimes you need the poets. ~ Cath Crowley

If Cath had to choose between everyone, she'd choose Wren. ~ Rainbow Rowell

I'm like him," she'd whispered.

"You're not," Wren said.

"I am. I'm crazy like him." She was already having panic attacks. She was already hiding at parties. In seventh grade, she'd been late to class for the first two weeks because she couldn't stand being in the halls with everyone else during passing periods. "It's probably going to get worse in a few years. That's when it usually kicks in."

"You're not," Wren said.

"But what if I am?"

"Decide not to be."

"That's not how it works," Cath argued.

"Nobody knows how it works."

"What if I don't even see it coming."

"I'll see it coming."

Cath tried to stop crying, but she'd been crying so long, the crying had taken over, making her bvreathe in harsh sniffs and jerks.

"If it takes you," Wren said. "I won't let go."

A few months later, Cath gave that line to Simon in a scene about Baz's bloodlust. Wren was still writing with Cath back then, and when she got to the line, she snorted.

"I'm here for you if you go manic," Wren said. "But you're on your own if you become a vampire."

"What good are you anyway," Cath said. Their dad was home by then. And better. And Cath didn't feel, for the moment, like her DNA was a trap ready to snap closed on her.

"Apparently, I'm good for something," Wren said. "You keep stealing all my best lines. ~ Rainbow Rowell

As far as Reagan was concerned, Cath was already problematically weird. "It's bad enough that you have homemade Simon Snow posters," Reagan had said last night while she was getting ready for bed. "Do you have to have gay homemade Simon Snow posters?"
Cath had looked up at the drawing over her desk of Simon and Baz holding hands. "Leave them alone," she said. "They're in love. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Cath couldn't control whether she saw Levi on campus. But she could worry about it, and as long as she was worrying about it, it probably wasn't going to happen. Like some sort of anxiety vaccine. Like watching a pot to make sure it never boiled. ~ Rainbow Rowell