Kate Greathead > Quotes

“Buck up. Fake it till you feel it. The show must go on. This was the way they did things - These people in the world she'd grown up in.”
― Kate Greathead, Laura & Emma

“I honestly don't know what's happened to you," Ellen continued. "When you were little you had all these interests. It was such a thrill, as your mother, to watch you doing your things, and imagine the person you'd grow up to be. And I'm not talking about some hotshot success at the top of his field - just a person who was engaged in the world, who had a thing he was passionate about doing. I want that for you, George, I want you to wake up in the morning and be excited to get out of bed and do whatever it is that you're passionate about. Or at least get out of bed and do it, even on the days you're not excited about it. I think you'd find there's a certain dignity in that, just getting up and doing what's expected of you, all the more so when it's not what you want to be doing, or what you expected out of life.”
― Kate Greathead, The Book of George

“That wasn’t ‘a little gas,’ George. That wasn’t an oops, I farted fart. That was a protracted, theatrically loud, shotgun, illegal-fireworksfrom-Chinatown kind of fart. It was the kind of fart you do when you’re all alone. To make sure you’re still alive. To reassure yourself that you actually exist.” George was impressed by her riff on the fart.”
― Kate Greathead, The Book of George

“It was as though a curtain had been pulled back and something terribly ugly had been revealed and nothing would ever feel the same. They could never go back to how it was, to how life was supposed to be, because it had never really been that way. Everything up to that point had been a game of make believe.”
― Kate Greathead, Laura & Emma

“People who thought New Yorkers were cold and uncaring didn’t understand that in a city like this, one’s physical proximity to strangers necessitated a respect of their psychological privacy.”
― Kate Greathead, Laura & Emma

“I honestly don't know what's happened to you," Ellen continued. "When you were little you had all these interests. It was such a thrill, as your mother, to watch you doing your things, and imagine the person you'd grow up to be. And I'm not talking about some hotshot success at the top of his field - just a person who was engaged in the world, who had a thing he was passionate about doing. I want that for you, George, I want you to wake up in the morning and be excited to get out of and do whatever it is that you're passionate about. Or at least get our of bed and do it, even on the days you're not excited about it. I think you'd find there's a certain dignity in that, just getting up and doing what's expected of you, a;; the more so when it's not what you want to be doing, or what you expected out of life.”
― Kate Greathead, The Book of George

“For the rest of the day she carried it around. It felt like a huge secret, like she’d just found out she’d won an award and couldn’t tell anyone. But she didn’t care, because there was no vanity in goodness.”
― Kate Greathead, Laura & Emma

“They saw her and Emma as incomplete, stray people, a free-floating fragment; the goal was to make them whole and anyone, anyone, anyone would be better than no one.”
― Kate Greathead, Laura & Emma

“The disparity of their desserts was beyond anything Emma could have imagined. Blinking back tears, she put a raisin in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed—repeating the process until the gross, sticky box was empty, her disgust rendered bearable by the feeling that struck in situations of unfairness: a feeling that her life was a movie and the audience was God, and a faith in knowing her grace and fortitude in this moment would not go unnoticed.”
― Kate Greathead, Laura & Emma

“Laura felt like they were characters in a play about WASPs—a satirical production that yielded no new insights, just desiccated clichés. She imagined an Upper West Side Jewish audience getting bored and leaving before intermission.”
― Kate Greathead, Laura & Emma

“One of the more exhausting aspects of getting older was having to act like an adult. Pretending to like people you couldn’t stand, speaking for the sake of filling a silence, smiling when you felt like crying.”
― Kate Greathead, Laura & Emma

“If a life is measured by the affection one earned, where would that leave her?”
― Kate Greathead, Laura & Emma

“He was the real deal, a genuine misanthrope who could exist only in New York City”
― Kate Greathead, The Book of George

“He didn't think she would make a good lawyer. She was too guileless, too deferential. She lacked a certain calculating reserve.”
― Kate Greathead, The Book of George