Catherine McKenzie Quotes

#1. Her departure was a gradual thing, like a watercolor left in the sun, every day fainter until one day the canvas was bare and you had to rely on memory to recapture the image.

Catherine McKenzie

#2. Some people are meant to disappear from your life, to remain a memory, a faded possibility. A curiosity. I ought to know. But when curiosity is so easily fulfilled, how do you avoid fulfilling it? A button is pressed and you're friends again.

Catherine McKenzie

#3. All I knew was I had to talk to someone. I had to try to steal someone's rationality.

Catherine McKenzie

#4. I don't think that bad actions erase good ones. Not really.

Catherine McKenzie

#5. And while I got that about him, he never seemed to understand or believe it when I told him I wasn't like that. That I was happy to coast. To drift and summersault like a dried-out leaf in the late fall, hoping to avoid the rake, the collecting pile, the compost heap.

Catherine McKenzie

#6. Is there a panic button I can hit? Or better yet, a button that will pause this whole scene while I figure out how I want to play it?
But no. That's not how it works in real life.

Catherine McKenzie

#7. You don't want to work to fall in love, you want to be in love. Like in a fairy tale.

Catherine McKenzie

#8. It seemed like almost nothing had happened, but that almost nothing changed everything for me.

Catherine McKenzie

#9. Like how there's this optimal money/happiness equation. Once you pass a certain amount of household income, life isn't any better. Apparently, money can't buy happiness, or it does, but it costs less than you imagined it would.

Catherine McKenzie

#10. But, of course, everyone has regrets. Loose ends. Things they could do if they had more time.

Catherine McKenzie

#11. Life doesn't wait. You have to make it happen. You have to live it while it's happening around you. Life moves on.

Catherine McKenzie

#12. You can quit if you want. If you hate it. If it isn't fun anymore. I'll back you with Dad. But you can't quit just because it's hard. Things are hard for most people. Life is hard.

Catherine McKenzie

#13. His mouth tastes like Scotch, and feels familiar, like somewhere I've been before.

Catherine McKenzie

#14. It's all because of the video cameras. Standard issue in daycares these days: twelve cameras (six in the baby room, six in the toddler room), all strategically positioned so any concerned parent can watch their child all day long via streaming video if they want to.

Catherine McKenzie

#15. Everyone's path to here is unique, Anne. It's what you do from here that counts.

Catherine McKenzie

#16. That I'd been letting life act itself out on me when I should have been directing it.

Catherine McKenzie

#17. If someone figured out a way to bottle woman-been-wronged, they'd make a fortune.

Catherine McKenzie

#18. One minute doesn't erase a thousand.

Catherine McKenzie

#19. Love isn't simple, Katie, and neither is life. Things that are worth having are sometimes complicated, and they evoke complicated emotions. You know, one of the reasons people often turn to alcohol or drugs is that they can't deal with complications.

Catherine McKenzie

#20. Suppose I say summer, write the word "hummingbird," put it in an envelope, take it down the hill to the box. When you open my letter you will recall those days and how much, just how much, I love you.

Catherine McKenzie

#21. It's hard to find someone you'd rather spend time with than not.

Catherine McKenzie

#22. A pod in the Matrix is looking pretty good right now.

Catherine McKenzie

#23. And why do the main characters always have to hate each other at the beginning of the movie? Like, hello, red flag. It's so obvious they're going to get together.

Catherine McKenzie

#24. Hummingbird Suppose I say summer, write the word "hummingbird," put it in an envelope, take it down the hill to the box. When you open my letter you will recall those days and how much, just how much, I love you. - RAYMOND CARVER

Catherine McKenzie