Cathy Lamb > Quotes

“But grief is a walk alone. Others can be there, and listen. But you will walk alone down your own path, at your own pace, with your sheared-off pain, your raw wounds, you denial, anger, and bitter loss. You'll come to your own peace, hopefully, but it will be on your own, in your own time.”
― Cathy Lamb, The First Day of the Rest of My Life

“Grab the love. Hold on tight. Treasure it. Put that love you have for your husband first, arrange everything else around it, and all else will work out. Love must be cradled and nurtured and enjoyed and danced with. Never, ever, forget the love. It's why we want to live.
Aunt Lydia's character, Julia's Chocolates”
― Cathy Lamb

“I laughed until my fat hurt.”
― Cathy Lamb

“Sisters are the worst. And they are the best. A sister can be awful and complicated and loving and protective and petty and competitive, and when you die she is the person you want beside you holding your hand. Somebody's gotta organize the potluck after the service and you know your husband's not gonna be up to the job.”
― Cathy Lamb, Henry's Sisters

“Sometimes things are so insanely private, you don't even want to talk about them with yourself. Don't talk about them, don't wrestle with them, don't let them run you over. Let it be.”
― Cathy Lamb, Henry's Sisters

“Sanity is tenuous. Tenuous. Comes and goes. Many of the brightest people floating about this planet have only a finger's grip on sanity, if that.”
― Cathy Lamb

“Stevie: "If you think he's a lecher and all men are disgusting, why do you want me to date?"
Zena: "Because, Stevie. Now and then, when the moon is full and bluish, when the galaxy is all calm and peaceful and serenity rules and even the falling stars are falling gracefully, and the wind creates a beautiful song, that's when you find one outstanding man. Kind. Loyal. Funny and smart, great in bed but not kinky. A lover in his head and in his body. A man who doesn't think as a dick-obsessed monkey with a brain the size of a testicle, but one who is thoughtful and can hold his emotions in one hand and hug you close with the other. A man who is a hunky, manly man but who can talk to you like your best girlfriend, because that's what he wants to be for you. Your best friend."
(Page 44)”
― Cathy Lamb, Such a Pretty Face

“When you're sad or depressed, you might as well get something done," Lydia always said. "Pretty soon, you're not sad or depressed, and darned if things aren't done.”
― Cathy Lamb

“Sometimes that’s all you can do, I think. Hold hands. Because life gets so scary sometimes, so bleak, so cold, that you are beyond being able to be comforted by mere words.


‘Men are for amusement only. They are treats. Like candy. Like ice cream on an Alabama afternoon. A dessert. They are not the main course. As soon as you have a man in your life who becomes the main course, that is the time, my sweet, when you should go on a diet. Right that second. Men are for dessert only.’ Envision: honey.
‘Yum, yum,’ I told her.
‘They are yummy.’ She winked at me. ‘But never take them seriously. A bite here and there is puh-lenty. All three of my husbands died, bless their pea-brained souls, but I never thought of them as the chicken and potatoes. They were always the flamin’ cherries jubilee at the end of dinner.’ She stared off into space. ‘And there was many a time, darlin’, that I wanted to set them on fire.”
― Cathy Lamb

“A child’s bond to her mother cannot be understated, and my bond with Helen was a ragged, baffling, disheartening, chaotic mess. I felt crazy, often, around my own mother. I grew up questioning what was normal, asking what reality was and wasn’t, and not trusting the outcome of different situations. She scared me and I couldn’t predict her behavior, so I was often off-kilter and worried.”
― Cathy Lamb, Such a Pretty Face

“Seasons are like life. Some seasons are better than others. Some have more sun and rainbows. Others have storms and tornadoes. Some have both. You have to accept that, and bring colour and light to the season you're in as best you can, and always look forward to the next season.”
― Cathy Lamb, A Different Kind of Normal

“... I would far rather get to be ninety years old and look back and say, "I tried my damnedest" to succeed, rather than get to be ninety and think, "I wonder what would have happened if only I had done something different.
Katie's character, Julia's Chocolates”
― Cathy Lamb

“Lance told me his father didn’t think much of him. “He wishes I was better. More better. At everything. I don’t do anything right, you know, Stevie. Nothing.” He said this matter-of-factly. He believed it as truth. Polly told me her father never said anything nice to her, but she kept trying as hard as she could to make him pay her some attention. “He always says, ‘Don’t get fat as your mother has,’ but I don’t think Mom’s fat at all, but I try not to eat much, but he keeps saying it to me. Do you think I’m fat, Stevie? When my hair is messy do you think I look like a stray...”
― Cathy Lamb, Such a Pretty Face

“What Grandma has told me about life: No one promised you a bucket of pansies, so don’t be one. Everyone thinks a great life is one filled with fun and fluff. No, that’s a pointless life. A great life is filled with challenges and adversity. It’s how you knock the hell out of it that shows what kind of person you are. Keep a hand out to help someone up, but don’t give them two hands or you’ll enable them to be a weak and spineless jellyfish. Always look your best. Not for a man, that’s ridiculous, what do they know? Nothing. They know nothing. It’s for you.”
― Cathy Lamb, If You Could See What I See

“I can wield any type of saw out there, and I have to do this, even if it takes me years. That I can even think in terms of a future, is a miracle. Why? Because two and a half years ago, when I was thirty-two years old, I had a heart attack. I used to be the size of a small, depressed cow. The heart attack led to my stomach strangling operation, and I lost 170 pounds. Now I am less than half myself, in more ways than one.”
― Cathy Lamb, Such a Pretty Face

“When moonlight touches you, it’s time for a woman to sit back and think, really think, about her life.”
― Cathy Lamb, Julia's Chocolates

“If Christ had wanted us to wallow in regret, he would have said so. If Christ had wanted us to let guilt rule our past and future, he would have told us. He did not.” Father Mike clasped my hands again. “If Christ felt we were unforgiveable, he would not have offered forgiveness. God would not have sacrificed his son for us.”
― Cathy Lamb, Henry's Sisters

“She was in that place in your soul where friends go who die but you still love them and talk to them and think of them.”
― Cathy Lamb, No Place I'd Rather Be

“When you’re sad or depressed, you might as well get something done,” Lydia always said. “Pretty soon, you’re not sad or depressed, and darned if things aren’t done.”
― Cathy Lamb, Julia's Chocolates

“I am emotionally screwed up, but I put on a front and fake it so I can function. Sometimes I wonder how many other people are doing the same thing.”
― Cathy Lamb, The Language of Sisters

“I don't know how else to handle it. I work, I talk to people, I walk, I see you and Polly and Aunt Janet, but there are moments when I'm stark lonely. Other moments when I think my loneliness will eat me alive. And sometimes it's vaguely there, hanging around, waiting to go away, maybe on a trip somewhere, and often I'm not lonely at all and feel happy to be alive. Does that make any sense?"
"Yes, honey, it does."
"So I try to get busy, I work in my garden, I read and make things, and move through it."
"That's about all we can do, sweetie, move through it, right?"
"Yep. Move through loneliness and isolation and hope you can outrun it for awhile.”
― Cathy Lamb, Such a Pretty Face

“I sprinted into the conference room as my boss, and the owner of this law firm, Cherie Poitras, grabbed her client around the waist, a woman dressed to the nines in high heels and a cream suit. The woman had actually crawled up on the conference table and lunged for her husband. Cherie and I wrestled her off, but not before the husband’s attorney put him in a headlock to keep him from strangling his soon-to-be ex-wife. Even in a headlock, the husband, a local politician who stressed the sanctity of marriage and traditional values, struggled to get at his wife, his arms and legs flailing around...”
― Cathy Lamb, Such a Pretty Face

“It is a sad, tormenting event in life when you are watching someone you love die. You know they’re leaving. You know that train is coming. You don’t know exactly when the train will arrive, but you know it’s on its way. You can hear the whistle echoing in the distance, out over the sea. You can see the steam above the straight line of the horizon. A bare puff, but it’s there.”
― Cathy Lamb, My Very Best Friend

“I’ve never felt young. People talk about a carefree youth, and I have no idea what they’re talking about. I was never carefree, I never felt . . . youthful. My goal was to survive.”
― Cathy Lamb, What I Remember Most

“I am not sure how, in a democratic society, we can justify letting people live like this-people who are doing the work the average Joe Blow American wouldn’t do for an hour without calling his lawyer to report physically abusive conditions, and demanding ten years wages and punitive damages in the millions.”
― Cathy Lamb, The Last Time I Was Me

“Let's face it. you become a deeper person amidst adversity. You become a more perceptive, strong, resilient person when life is not handed to you on a silver platter held by a butler.”
― Cathy Lamb, A Different Kind of Normal

“When his heart stopped, Boat lifted that huge head off Arty’s chest and licked his face. He licked Margaret’s face, then gingerly left the bed with the help of two great-granddaughters and creaked over to a corner and stood staring up at it, the bell on his pink collar ringing. He didn’t move for thirty minutes; he stood and stared at that corner. He barked a few times. I knew what he was doing. I’d seen it before with animals and their owners.”
― Cathy Lamb, A Different Kind of Normal

“Grandma leaped up on her chair, hand shielding her eyes from the sun. “I see a ship! We’re saved!” she shouted. I waved my napkin. “Hooray!” Everybody else waved their napkins, too. We have to do this or Grandma gets upset. It was pathetic how easily I was falling into the Bommarito family insanity.”
― Cathy Lamb, Henry's Sisters

“Lust is a great feeling. It sharpens everything in life. Rainbows are brighter. Snowflakes more intricate. Ice cream creamier. The little annoying things in life are even covered in this lust, and they simply cease to bother you any more. All you can think about is sex, and when you see that person you feel those smoldering sex embers in your body flare into a burning inferno. And then, well, it’s over.”
― Cathy Lamb, Julia's Chocolates

“They never leave our hearts, the ones we love. Where we go, they go. When we cry, they comfort. When we laugh, they laugh, too. When we grieve, when we’re lonely, it’s their hand we reach for, if only in our minds. We hear their voices, their advice, sometimes their reprimands. We hear their words of love and encouragement, of warning. Their love lives on, breathes on, carries on, and eventually gives us peace, the memories holding us in a hug.”
― Cathy Lamb, My Very Best Friend