Catriona Ross > Quotes

“Although he was a young man, younger by far than any of the others, Clare could tell from the gate’s whine as it swung out before him that he knew from experience how certain things worked – people, women, complicated gates. He knew how to touch something so that it clicked open in his hands.”
― Catriona Ross, The Love Book

“Stop waiting for something or someone to inspire you,’ she says. ‘Get inspired by your own life. Find a chaise; lie on it; be your own muse, for heaven’s sake. Can’t you see the best stories are already inside you, awaiting their release?”
― Catriona Ross, The Presence of Peacocks: Or How to Find Love and Write a Novel

“The sexiest part of a woman,’ Carlos said after considering her question for a few moments, ‘is her mind. Her thoughts. What is inside.”
― Catriona Ross, The Love Book

“She doesn’t want him to continue ageing in front of her, for she is afraid of what it will require from her. As he diminishes, she will have to expand.”
― Catriona Ross, Little Diamond Eye

“Mastery of the self is everything.”
― Catriona Ross, The Last Book on Earth

“The sound swells until Freya knows she is approaching her personal maximum capacity. What now? She arrives at this point only to find it is a tissue barrier to be pushed through. Beyond it, she increases not in sound volume but in some other dimension. Something is growing, becoming greater than she is.”
― Catriona Ross

“What do you do about emotional pain, Lionel?’ I ask.
In red lamplight, she rises from the bath like the prow of a galleon. ‘I write about my times of suffering. It makes me hate them slightly less,’ she says, wrapping herself in a vast towel. ‘Sometimes, I’m even grateful for them.”
― Catriona Ross

“I’ve never forgotten that look, though it lasted only a few seconds. She seemed drawn to something in me, or in the scene I had unwittingly presented. Whatever I had been or done in the past was of no consequence to her, I sensed; what intrigued her lay in the present moment. And I now suspect she was doing what all novelists do when they stop to look at something. She was sizing me up to see if I could fit into her fictional world. Did I belong in her web of characters and plot? With a bit of touching up, could I be incorporated into some tale one day? Would I be of use?
Lionel Wolfe-Valentine saw the potential for story in me, and I love her for that.
‘I’m Sabrina Bell,’ I said. ‘My mother lives across the valley.”
― Catriona Ross, The Presence of Peacocks: Or How to Find Love and Write a Novel

“Apparently the sky was once dark. His grandparents spoke of it. 'Remember the time we walked home to the hotel that winter's night? You couldn't see your hand in front of you.' The darkness was only in the country areas, so they'd had to travel out to see it. What had it felt like? Had there been stars? He had never thought to ask them.”
― Catriona Ross, The Last Book on Earth

“In the absence of her customised soundtrack, there's only the dissonant music of the tangible: her own breathing as she walks, the coughs and tics of her family, their tacky-sounding footsteps on the road surface, the rustle of garments, the trundle of the stroller pushed by Tym while Boyki naps.”
― Catriona Ross, The Last Book on Earth

“There will be no more nostalgias, Phil decides. From now on I’m living in this moment, then this one, and then this. I will look at what I have and what I could have next, and that’s how I’ll go forward.”
― Catriona Ross, Little Diamond Eye