Kate Fagan > Quotes

“You hold me steady without holding me still.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“The trick of life, as I see it now, is to make what’s around you beautiful. It’ll grow from there. Took me a long time to see that.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“tiring, but it is not confusing. You are never left wondering if you’ve made the wrong choice, or expended energy in the wrong direction, because there is only the one rung above you. Get good grades. Get better at your sport. Take the SAT. Do volunteer work. Apply to colleges. Choose a college. But then you get to college, and suddenly you’re out of rungs and that ladder has turned into a massive tree with hundreds of sprawling limbs, and progress is no longer a thing you can easily measure, because there are now thousands of paths to millions of destinations. And none are linear.”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“What many people don’t understand about serious injury or illness is that what you’re really coming to grips with isn’t the physical limitations (although there is that); it’s how the physical limitations alter your interactions with the world. At first, you can only take. You take people’s time, their physical energy, their emotional reserves. You’re in a state of need and you take, take, take without giving. And taking without giving, that messes with your head. You start asking yourself what the point of your existence is. A drain on the world’s resources, on the resources of those you love, nothing else. But eventually—and it may take years, as it did for me—you discover ways to start giving again. Honestly, you’d be shocked at how many ways exist to give in this world if that’s all you’re looking for.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“But like everything in life, you’d be amazed at what you can get used to.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“One of the trickiest parts of social media is recognizing that everyone is doing the same thing you’re doing: presenting their best self. Everyone is now a brand, and all of digital life is a fashion magazine.”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“Living with a ghost is frightening enough, but if you change houses to escape it and the ghost is present in the new space, then you’ve confirmed that it’s not the house the ghost is haunting. It’s you.”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“Broken things are beautiful. More beautiful in the end than perfect things, which are usually an illusion of some sort. I hoped I had given her a beautiful life.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“I hadn’t achieved anything and already wanted more. What was the word for that? Insatiable, perhaps. But that was so earthly, calling to mind sex, or food. What I craved was cosmic bigness.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“Madison and her friends were the first generation of “digital natives”—kids who’d never known anything but connectivity. That connection, at its most basic level, meant that instead of calling your parents once a week from the dorm hallway, you could call and text them all day long, even seeking their approval for your most mundane choices, like what to eat at the dining hall. Constant communication may seem reassuring, the closing of physical distance, but it quickly becomes inhibiting. Digital life, and social media at its most complex, is an interweaving of public and private personas, a blending and splintering of identities unlike anything other generations”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“One study found that an average high school student today likely deals with as much anxiety as did a psychiatric patient in the 1950s. The numbers are eye-opening”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t. Doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask. Feelings or opinions that would get you laughed at by the group or reprimanded by the authorities. This is what we call thinking out loud, discovering what you believe in the course of articulating it. But it takes just as much time and just as much patience as solitude in the strict sense. And our new electronic world has disrupted it just as violently. Instead of having one or two true friends that we can sit and talk to for three hours at a time, we have 968 “friends” that we never actually talk to; instead we just bounce one-line messages off them a hundred times a day. This is not friendship, this is distraction.”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“Digital life, and social media at its most complex, is an interweaving of public and private personas, a blending and splintering of identities unlike anything other generations have experienced.”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“Maybe comfort exists in believing there is order in the world, even when someone is making the most disorderly decision we know: running toward death instead of away from it.

In their absence, we're left trying to pin meaning to air.”
― Kate Fagan

“being cool in high school was a death sentence. No pain to fuel you later.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“The pressure to be great, not good, is unrelenting. Believing that this pressure will simply disappear once kids arrive on campus seems like wishful thinking.”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“When Jim was growing up, good colleges were challenging to get into, but it wasn't like it is today, when being a solid, diligent student is no longer enough. Students today must display excellence -- not just competence --- in numerous areas. The pressure to be great, not just good, is unrelenting. Believing this pressure will disappear once kids arrive on campus seems like wishful thinking.”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“And we're not just talking high school students; this practice of hovering often begins before they've learned how to write. Kids used to grow up in a neighborhood-- on the block or in the parks, playing games with other kids. These games had rules, but the kids themselves determined them, flexing their imaginations. Social scientists called these activities -- capture the flag, bike races, pickup baseball games -- "free play, " and it's been steadily decreasing since the 1950s. Scientists have also noted a correlation between the decreasing amount of childhood free play—any play not directed by adults—and the increasing rates of anxiety and depression among kids. As free play decreases, anxiety increases.”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“the day this story started—the day I caught the sickness of wanting to eat the world.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“The trick of life, as I see it now, is to make what’s around you beautiful. It’ll grow from there. Took me a long time to see that.” I sat”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“of being okay, and having everything together, and almost, like, say, even though I’m stressed, I still have time to have a perfect social life, perfect grades, to join all these clubs, and I’m super successful. But in reality people are stressed, and do feel alone, and it’s important to address those things. Peter: Picture a duck, and below the surface they are scrambling for their lives, but above the water everything appears peaceful—not a care in the world. That’s Penn Face. Kathryn: I think Penn Face also comes from the expectations we have for ourselves, and that people around us have for us at an Ivy League university—you’re supposed to be having the best four years of your life. We get this messaging everywhere. And having a hard time is not part of that messaging, which perpetuates the belief that “I’m not okay” must mean that something is wrong with you instead of something a lot of people might feel. Devanshi: Ivy League schools compile all the top students in one place and”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“Some stories simply touch us more deeply as they reach right into our hearts, settle there, and never leave.”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“Lawyers, we get a bad rap. We’re just storytellers. The only difference is, unlike a book or movie, we don’t say whether the story is true or false.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“How sublime the feeling, to be known again.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“Listening to my brain was exhausting.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are. —Montesquieu”
― Kate Fagan, What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen

“And I wonder how many other things in life I’ve misjudged this badly. More than I can stomach, I’m sure.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“She was a confident person. But like all confident people, it was only about 87 percent authentic. Doubt just lived on the outskirts of town instead of in the center, like it does for everyone else.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“It’s like… ummm… how do I explain this? It’s like you hold me steady, but without holding me still.” After a long pause, the other said, “It’s an honor to hold you steady.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay

“I’d been maimed playing the game of life.”
― Kate Fagan, The Three Lives of Cate Kay