Catriona Ward > Quotes

“Anyway the trick to life is, if you don’t like what is happening, go back to sleep until it stops.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“The young feel pain intensely, I think, because they don’t know yet how deep it can go.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“Everything in life is a rehearsal for loss. Only the smart people know it.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“How many times can someone bend before they break forever? You have to take care, dealing with broken things; sometimes they give way, and break others in their turn.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“I judge people two ways—on how they treat animals, and on what they like to eat. If their favorite food is some kind of salad, they are definitely a bad person. Anything with cheese, they are probably OK.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“I’ll tell you a secret, kitten. Everyone feels like that sometimes. Sometimes things get bad, and you can’t see a future ahead. It’s all cloudy, like the sky on a rainy day. But life moves very fast. Things never stay the same forever, even the bad things. The clouds will blow away. They always do, I promise.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“Thoughts are a door that the dead walk through.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“I like this kind of place, where you’re in between one thing and another. Hallways, waiting rooms, lobbies and so on; rooms where nothing is actually supposed to happen. It relieves a lot of pressure and lets me think.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“I don’t recall names but I have my ways of judging and remembering people. The first one is: would they be kind to my cat?”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“The first thing I hate is called a Russian doll. It holds a smaller version of itself inside it, and another inside that and so on. How awful. They are prisoners. I imagine them all screaming in the dark, unable to move or speak. The doll’s face is broad and blankly smiling. It looks so happy to be holding its children captive.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“Kids are mirrors, reflecting back everything that happens to them. You’ve got to make sure they’re surrounded by good things.”
― Catriona Ward, Sundial

“When people say something is “unthinkable,” what they usually mean is that they don’t want to think it. They are resistant to an idea. But that is not what unthinkable means. I understand that, now. It means to be confronted with a thought so vast, dark, and monstrous that it will not fit into any known shapes in your mind. It is poison and madness flowering behind your eyes.”
― Catriona Ward, Sundial

“There’s a monster inside each of us,’ he says. 'If you let yours out, Ted, it might not eat you.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“Writers are monsters, really. We eat everything we see.”
― Catriona Ward, Looking Glass Sound

“No one told me that grief would feel so much like fear.”
― Catriona Ward, Looking Glass Sound

“Potatoes make everything okay.”
― Catriona Ward, Looking Glass Sound

“If one thing comes to light, others follow. They are like that, secrets, they move in flocks like birds.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“It is a kind of privilege, to witness the darkness.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“I had always felt that there was something wrong with me. I was like one of the tracings I did on her baking paper, a bad one, where the comic book underneath slipped; the lines slewed across the page, and the picture became a monstrous version of itself.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“I don't know what it's like for other people, but love and nausea are often indistinguishable to me”
― Catriona Ward, Sundial

“The thing about anger is, you mustn’t let it drop or you might find out how you really feel.”
― Catriona Ward, Looking Glass Sound

“It’s possible to feel the horror of something and to accept it all at the same time. How else could we cope with being alive?”
― Catriona Ward, Sundial

“I think I would do OK in prison, because I like small enclosed spaces and being alone.”
― Catriona Ward, Sundial

“The past always has its hands around your neck, doesn't it?”
― Catriona Ward, Sundial

“You can'ŧ get to know people after they're gone. All you have are memories, moments, and that doesn't make a whole person.”
― Catriona Ward, Looking Glass Sound

“Clocks are everywhere if you know how to recognize them. A dandelion is a clock, obviously. Rice pouring into a bowl is a clock, each grain marking the passage of time. A school assignment, an apple as it withers, a tree waiting for spring. Each of these things measures living moments, what remains before death. Tick, tock.”
― Catriona Ward, Sundial

“There can be comfort in a disguise. Being who you are can be lonely.”
― Catriona Ward, Looking Glass Sound

“Bad things are happening. It seems best to sleep until they stop.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street

“The human heart is deep and dark with many chambers. Things hide down there.”
― Catriona Ward, Looking Glass Sound

“I would also investigate the type and quality of naps there are, because there are so many different kinds. Short and deep--I call that kind "the wishing well." The very light doze, kind of half under, which can go on for hours--I call those "skateboards." The sort you have in front of the TV when a good show is playing (NOT this show) and you kind of take in the plot but are also asleep--those are called "whisperers.”
― Catriona Ward, The Last House on Needless Street