Catherine Tyrrell > Catherine's Quotes

“The things we do outlast our mortality. The things we do are like monuments that people build to honor heroes after they've died. They're like the pyramids that the Egyptians built to honor the pharaohs. Only instead of being made of stone, they're made out of the memories people have of you.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do - the best ones. The ones who rise up and say "I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come." Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“His soul sat up. It met me.Those kinds of souls always do - the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, 'I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go of course, but I will come'.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Then when she really thought about it she realized she’d been becoming different people for as long as she could remember but had never really noticed, or had put it down to moods, or marriage, or motherhood. The problem was that she’d thought that at a certain point she would be a finished product.”
― Anna Quindlen, Still Life with Bread Crumbs

“It was only after her death that I realized who she was: the apparently magical force at the center of our family who'd kept us all invisibly spinning in the powerful orbit around her.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“And it occurs to me that maybe the reason my mother was so exhausted all the time wasn’t because she was doing so much but because she was feeling so much.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue

“But now I see there's no such thing as "a" woman, "one" woman. There are dozens inside every one of them. I probably should have figured this out sooner, but what child can see the women inside her mom, what with all the Motherness blocking out everything else?”
― Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue

“The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once she's gone, it's a whole different game.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue

“Here is why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own.

...I beg of you, pretend you are a dog like me and LISTEN to other people rather than steal their stories.”
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“I can’t tell you what to do. No one can. But as the mother of two children, I can tell you what most moms will: that mothering is absurdly hard and profoundly sweet. Like the best thing you ever did. Like if you think you want to have a baby, you probably should.

I say this in spite of the fact that children are giant endless suck machines. They don’t give a whit if you need to sleep or eat or pee or get your work done or go out to a party naked and oiled up in a homemade Alice B. Toklas mask. They take everything. They will bring you the furthest edge of your personality and abso-fucking-lutely to your knees.

They will also give you everything back. Not just all they take, but many of the things you lost before they came along as well.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“The amount that she loved us was beyond her reach. It could not be quantified or contained. It was the ten thousand named things in the Tao Te Ching’s universe and then ten thousand more. Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned. Every day she blew through her entire reserve.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Teenagers who do not go to church are adored by God, but they don't get to meet some of the people who love God back.”
― Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

“... In your twenties you're becoming who you're going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole. Also, because it's harder to be magnanimous when you're in your twenties, I think, and so that's why I'd like to remind you of it. You're generally less humble in that decade than you'll ever be and this lack of humility is oddly mixed with insecurity and uncertainty and fear. You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“This tug-of-war often obscures what's also happening between us. I am your mother, the first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give to you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of tribe, a run at happiness. You can't imagine how seriously I take that - even as I fail you. Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Lift

“My default answer to everything is no. As soon as I hear the inflection of inquiry in your voice, the word no forms in my mind, sometimes accompanies by a reason, often not. Can I open the mail? No. Can I wear your necklace? No. When is dinner? No. What you probably wouldn't believe is how much I want to say yes. Yes, you can take two dozen books home from the library. Yes, you can eat the whole roll of SweeTarts. Yes, you can camp out on the deck. But the books will get lost, and SweeTarts will eventually make your tongue bleed, and if you sleep on the deck, the neighborhood racoons will nibble on you. I often wish I could come back to life as your uncle, so I could give you more. But, when you're the mom, your whole life is holding the rope against those wily secret agents who never, ever stop trying to get you to drop your end.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Lift

“Raising people is not some lark. It's serious work with serious repercussions. It's air-traffic control. You can't step out for a minute; you can barely pause to scratch your ankle.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Glitter and Glue

“When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, your're the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The weight of his losses finally too much to bear.

But not before he has known the unforgiving light of the equator, a love that exists only in his imagination, and the enduring struggle to capture in words the infinite possibilities of a life not lived.”
― Anita Shreve, The Last Time They Met

“She felt with the shiver the rare sensation that she was exactly where she should be. She was an idea, a memory, one perfect possibility out of an infinite number.”
― Anita Shreve, The Last Time They Met

“the enduring struggle to capture in words the infinite possibilities of a life not lived.”
― Anita Shreve, The Last Time They Met

“I have always been faithful to you if faithful means the experience against which everything else has been measured.”
― Anita Shreve, The Last Time They Met

“I love you.
The first time the words pass between two people: electrifying.
Ten thousand times later: cause for marvel.
The last time: the dream you revisit over and over and over again.”
― Kelly Corrigan, Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say

“Joy is the best makeup.”
― Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“No" is a complete sentence.”
― Annie Lamott

“The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”
― John Muir

“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul”
― John Muir

“Belief has nothing to do with truth.”
― Percival Everett, James

“The thing Liza admired about her parents’ generation was that they didn’t seem to think very much. They just did things because those things looked a certain way and looking a certain way was half the battle. You reached a certain age and you found a semiattractive, living, breathing man, and you went through the motions even if he was boring or mean or a sociopath, and you stuck it out to the bitter end. And this was not the most romantic notion but she liked the stubbornness of it, the simplicity, the security.”
― Claire Lombardo, The Most Fun We Ever Had

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus