Cath's Quotes

#1. Fuck Wren. No ... Damn her. Never mind her. All Wren did lately was complicate Cath's world.

Rainbow Rowell

#2. Reagan was sitting at Cath's desk when Cath woke up. "Are you awake?" "Have you been watching me sleep?" "Yes, Bella. Are you awake?

Rainbow Rowell

#3. Knowing they were in the same city again made the missing him flare up inside her. In her stomach. Why were people always going on and on about the heart? Almost everything Levi happened in Cath's stomach.

Rainbow Rowell

#4. Levi kicked her chair. "Cath. Read me your fan fiction. I want to know what happens next."
She opened her computer slowly, as if she were still thinking about it. As if there were any way she was going to say no. Levi wanted to know what happened next. That question was Cath's Achilles' heel.

Rainbow Rowell

#5. as if all the years haven't dulled that moment. She's staring at a spot of air in front of it, and I know, in that spot of air, is her son.

Cath Crowley

#6. I think back to the night Leo talked to me from the floor, telling me he didn't like sleeping because that's when he dreamt. Telling me because in the dark it felt like we weren't awake, weren't even real.

Cath Crowley

#7. I told him he was dreaming. He told me dreaming's the only way to get anywhere.

Cath Crowley

#8. That's what we think because we can't imagine what it's like to not exist.

Cath Crowley

#9. It's harder to make someone laugh than it is to make them cry.

Cath Crowley

#10. Sometimes I wish I was a guy. Life's so much easier for them.

Cath Crowley

#11. You say one more word to anyone and I'm telling people you cried in here tonight because you thought Daisy was breaking up with you.' 'You wouldn't.' Leo's phone rings. 'He would,' he says, laughing as he answers it.

Cath Crowley

#12. You can't drive them around in the getaway van.' 'How about we don't call it the getaway van? People might get suspicious.' 'So what should we call it?' 'How about the van?' 'It doesn't change what it is and that it's a shitty thing to do. Someone might see them in it.

Cath Crowley

#13. I don't have to forgive you," Cath said. "It's not like that with you. You're just in with me. Always. No matter what happens.

Rainbow Rowell

#14. That part of the Skinny Bitch diet?" "We're skinny bitches on weekdays," Courtney said, "and drunk bitches on the weekend." Cath tried to catch Wren's eye. "I don't think

Rainbow Rowell

#15. All I can tell you is to have the relationship that's good for you.

Cath Crowley

#16. So I saw Beth today. She asked me how you were doing. Sounded like she wants you back."
"We were over months ago."
"You mind if I ask her out, then?"
"You mind if I spray a piece on the side of your gran's house?

Cath Crowley

#17. And we can talk about everything-she's a coder, too. And she got a thirty-four on the ACT (Cath got a thirty-two).

Rainbow Rowell

#18. She left," Cath said, "and she never came back. Who does that?"
"I don't know ... someone who's missing a piece.

Rainbow Rowell

#19. Tonight's going to be one of those things that seem to last forever.

Cath Crowley

#20. There's one near Hoover Street Station. A picture of me, grass growing out of my heart while I'm talking to her.
She looked at the wall but she didn't see us.

Cath Crowley

#21. Everything in the world's got a voice; most people don't hear hard enough is all. Sunrise sounds like slow chords dripping from my guitar this morning. Sad chords, in B-flat.

Cath Crowley

#22. No one has anything to get up for. Life's pointless and everyone just gets up anyway. That's how the human race works," she says, and hands me a coffee.

Cath Crowley

#23. I can't tell Beth about me being Shadow. She'd get uptight about me doing something she thinks is dangerous."
That's not why you won't tell her. You won't tell her because what's on that wall is what's going on in there." He tapped my head.

Cath Crowley

#24. Mum's always hinting I should ask him out, but when a girl finds talking as hard as I do and singing in public even harder, that leaves mime and interpretative dance. Don't get me wrong. I'd be great at both those things, but I don't think Dave's all that into the arts.

Cath Crowley

#25. It takes a lot of wanting to get out of a place like this, though. It takes wanting so bad it's all you care about, all you dream about, all you breathe. Some days I think it takes more wanting that I've got.

Cath Crowley

#26. It's when I'm around some people that my entire vocabulary goes on vacation. Like now, when Dave's walking next to me wearing an old black singlet and board shorts and the tattoo of a bird on his wrist, every single word in my head except "no" and "huh" is lying somewhere on a beack getting a suntan

Cath Crowley

#27. It's not like I don't have words in my head. I'm good with words. I'm great. On my own. In the dark. They come flooding. Sometimes I can't sleep I'm swimming in so many words.

Cath Crowley

#28. The girl looked older than Cath. Even with her eyes closed. Levi's other hand was tangled in her long, blond hair, and he was kissing her with his mouth smiling and open. He made it look so easy.

Rainbow Rowell

#29. He already knows what I look like," Cath said. "There's no point in being tricky about it now."
"How is doing your hair
and maybe putting on some lip gloss
being tricky?"
"It's like I'm trying to distract him with something shiny.

Rainbow Rowell

#30. It's like he's picking up parts of the world and showing them to me, saying, See? It's beautiful.

Cath Crowley

#31. He's got this way of smiling that makes me want to throw him down and kiss him. And yeah, I know that any guy I have to throw down to kiss probably isn't Mr. Right. Still. I can dream.

Cath Crowley

#32. You're weird," she said, falling asleep. "But that's okay. It makes me seem normal.

Cath Crowley

#33. Emma Forest?" Jazz asks. "His ex is the girl with the big ... ?"
"That's the one," Daisy tells her.
Jazz looks at her chest. I pat her shoulder. "Guys care about personality too."
"Girls like me started that rumor.

Cath Crowley

#34. Cath ... she's your mother."
"There is no evidence to support that.

Rainbow Rowell

#35. You're lucky if romance ends in something you can add water to and rehydrate. -Lucy's mom

Cath Crowley

#36. I guess love's kind of like a marshmallow in a microwave on high. After it explodes it's still a marshmallow. but, you know, now it's a complicated marshmallow.

Cath Crowley

#37. Nothing about art is a waste of time. It's the time wasting that gets you somewhere.

Cath Crowley

#38. I look up after the last chord and smile. I tell Antony Barellan to shove it up his arse, and I see Dad clapping his hands off. I give him a little wave to show him that it's okay to be happy. I give him a little smile to show him what it looks like.

Cath Crowley

#39. Hi," I call as he walks out. "Hi, Rosie. I told Charlie we were camping before New Year's." I think about that for a second. "You told her we were going, or you invited her to come?" "Shit,

Cath Crowley

#40. You're always saying people don't like you but people can't like something that's not there.

Cath Crowley

#41. What's wrong with Starbucks?"
"It's a big, faceless corporation." He raised a good-natured brow. "So far, they've let me keep my face.

Rainbow Rowell

#42. Mum says be careful of boys who never take anything seriously. Dad says a boy needs a good sense of humor to get through his love life. Jazz says my dad must need a sense of humor to get through his love life if he's living in the shed

Cath Crowley

#43. She's the psychic but she can't see what's coming up: the intersection of hurt and more hurt. The blind spot there is a killer.

Cath Crowley

#44. When wanting collides with getting, that's the moment of truth. I want to collide.

Cath Crowley

#45. Cath thought of Levi's warmth against her arm last night. And his ten thousand smiles. And his forty-acre foreheard.

Rainbow Rowell

#46. I nod so much there's a nodding festival going on.

Cath Crowley

#47. That's great, Cath said, trying not to let her face show how much she wanted to kiss and kill him.

Rainbow Rowell

#48. Amy doesn't love you."
George says it gently--like she's sympathetically sticking a piece of glass straight through my left eye.

Cath Crowley

#49. Who's this?" Dad asks when a catchy tune comes on the CD mix I made for the trip. We pass the skeleton tree that never has leaves, no matter what the time of year. Bare gray branches wave us on. "No one you know Dad," I say. It's me.

Cath Crowley

#50. seems like a lot of trouble for a boat that's going nowhere.

Cath Crowley

#51. I feel like Luke and I are on an island that's sinking and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I can swim, though. If Luke can't, then it's too bad. He's had sixteen years to learn.

Cath Crowley

#52. A dry, bookless world. It's too bleak to even imagine.

Cath Crowley

#53. When she and Wren divided up their clothes, Wren had taken anything that said "party at a boy's place" or "leaving the house." Cath had taken everything that said "up all night writing" or "it's okay to spill tea on this."" (pg. 189)

Rainbow Rowell

#54. Cath wanted to go back and rewrite every scene she'd ever written about Baz or Simon's chests. She'd written them flat and sharp and hard. Levi was all soft motion and breath, curves and warm hollows. Levi's chest was a living thing.

Rainbow Rowell

#55. If Dave Robbie's a song, he's written in major chords.

Cath Crowley

#56. Shut that thing down," Nick said. "You're corrupting my creative centers with static." "That's what she said," Cath said, closing her laptop.

Rainbow Rowell

#57. Ed gives him a dirty look. Leo grins. Dylan twitches. It feels like something's going on, I think loudly, and I know that Jazz hears my thought because she gives me her serious look and blows a chewing-gum bubble in my direction.

Cath Crowley

#58. That moment," she told Cath, "when you realize that a guy's looking at you differently - that you're taking up more space in his field of vision. That moment when you know he can't see past you anymore.

Rainbow Rowell

#59. It's a different kind of missing. You're trying to remember, and he's trying to forget.

Cath Crowley

#60. Asking's the easy bit. Then there's everything that comes after.

Cath Crowley

#61. I think she likes post-apocalyptic fiction so much because she's genuinely happy at the thought that the world might end.

Cath Crowley

#62. Were you in love with Emma?" I ask.
"I was hard-core obsessed," he says without thinking about it. "Not in love."
"What's the difference?"
He's about to throw a stone at ta yard light but stops. "Prison," he says, and puts the stone in his pocket.

Cath Crowley

#63. It felt good to be writing in her own room, in her own bed. To get lost in the World of Mages and stay lost. To not hear any voices in her head but Simon's and Baz's. Not even her own. This was why Cath wrote fic. For these hours when their world supplanted the real world.

Rainbow Rowell

#64. You threw eggs at her head. Odds are she's dumping you anyway.

Cath Crowley

#65. It's not wind at all," Cath said. "It's what we feel when time suddenly jolts forward.

Rainbow Rowell

#66. This is the problem,' she says.
'With us?'
'With everything. No one's saying what they want.

Cath Crowley

#67. Tell me why you're so unhappy."
"It's just ... everything.There are too many people.And I don't fit in.I don't know how to be.

Rainbow Rowell

#68. I've known Dave so long that I can tell what he's going to do before he does it. I don't want to meet the person who can predict what Luke's about to do; they'd have to be crazier than him.

Cath Crowley

#69. Reaming's the only way to get you anywhere.

Cath Crowley

#70. Art like that doesn't need words. That painting tells you something by pulling you into it and pushing you out and you know what it's saying without words being spoken.

Cath Crowley

#71. Taking off Levi's shirt had been such an inspired idea, Cath was thinking about losing her own.

Rainbow Rowell

#72. I'm fine," [her dad] said gently. "Back on the horse, Cath.'
'What's the horse?' she sighed, watching him pull on a South High hoodie. 'Jogging? Working too much?'
'Living,' he said, a little too loud. 'Life's the horse.

Rainbow Rowell

#73. Ed? Are you alive?'
'Yes..and that's genuinely surprising
since your bike went over me about
halfway down. You're a very dangerous
girl to date.'
'We're not on a date.

Cath Crowley

#74. I don't believe him for a second, but I'm not telling Daisy that Dylan lied because I know what it's like to want a girl that much. To get dragged in the dirt behind her hoping you won't lose your grip.

Cath Crowley

#75. She bent over to pick up her glasses. "Do you need those?" Reagan asked. "Yes" - Cath put them on - "I need them to keep me from becoming the girl in She's All That.

Rainbow Rowell

#76. What would we do together?" Cath asked. "He'd want to go to the bar,and I'd want to stay home and write fanfiction.

Rainbow Rowell

#77. The ticking inside
On the inside of him there's a wire fence
And past the wire fence is a dog And past the dog are thieves And past the thieves
Is a gang of bad dreams
And past the dreams
If you can get past the dreams Are the things that make him tick Tick, tick, tick
(Page 54).

Cath Crowley

#78. The Irish 'n Polacks always get along- didn't ya ever notice? Irish 'n Polacks live on p'tatoes 'n got it in for Hitler, that's why they get along so good; all over the world. Never heard of no war between Poland 'n Ireland, did you? No sir, that's cause we're all Cath'lics.

Nelson Algren

#79. You're funny, which you can't be if you're not smart. Dad says it's harder to make someone laugh than it is to make them smile.

Cath Crowley

#80. I like that about art, that what you see is sometimes more about who you are than what's on the wall. I look at this painting and think about how everyone has some secret inside, something sleeping like that yellow bird.

Cath Crowley

#81. We said it was for art's sake. we said the more people who knew, the more chance the cops'd pick us up. We said it was you and me, no crew.'
Are you I didn'nt say it was to score girls?

Cath Crowley

#82. It's a relief to tell Henry, to let everything out - losing Cal, how I failed, how everything feels ruined now. It's a relief to cry and have Henry tell me this is the correct response and to hold out his sleeve. I

Cath Crowley

#83. You were right. Real is better. The truth is better. It makes you feel kind of stupid, but it's better.

Cath Crowley

#84. There's nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself. Professor Piper

Rainbow Rowell

#85. There was a knock at the door. Cath eyed it suspiciously. More knocking. "I know that's you," she said into the phone. Levi laughed.

Rainbow Rowell

#86. I want to sit on the other side of the table from him so he doesn't think I'm interested, but there's no room on the other side so I sit as far away from him as I can and try to have an out-of-body experience.

Cath Crowley

#87. You know, Leo's brother's hooking me up with a car when I get my license. I'm making you get in while it's moving.

Cath Crowley

#88. Where's the fire, Lucy Dervish?'
In me. Under my skin.

Cath Crowley

#89. It's like I'm trying to distract him with something shiny." Cath circled her spoon hand in front of her face, accidentally flicking cottage cheese on her sweater. "He already knows about all this. This is what I look like." She tried to scrape the cottage cheese off without rubbing it in." (pg. 290)

Rainbow Rowell

#90. We watch her walk into the spotlight she's been been hiding from most of her life. Sure, friendship is all about believing in someone so hard they believe it, too. Sure, it's about trust. But if anyone hurts her tonight, it's about ripping them apart with my bare hands and really enjoying it.

Cath Crowley

#91. Why do want to find him so bad?' I ask after a while, but she's not listening. I watch her a bit
longer. 'Why do you want to find him so bad?' I ask again.
She blinks and comes out of her dream. She flicks the band on her wrist. 'I just do.' - Ed Skye

Cath Crowley

#92. The falls is the only place that's not quiet here. Dave and Luke don't know it, but sometimes I go there on my own. I go to scream. I go to tell the world to get lost under the run of the water. I stand till I'm drowning in something other than this place.

Cath Crowley

#93. I swim off Dad and Grandpa and the memory of Jeremy's party. I swim off that music they played at Mum's funeral. I swim till the ghosts in me are numb.

Cath Crowley

#94. He's one of the good guys,' she always said.'Just sometimes he's working undercover

Cath Crowley

#95. Mum says when wanting collides with getting, that's the moment of truth. I want to collide. I want to run right into Shadow and let the force spill our thoughts so we can pick each other up and pass each other back like piles of shiny stones.

Cath Crowley

#96. Drunk nerds. Not my thing."
"You like nerds."
"Not nerds who join fraternities," Cath said. "That's a whole subclass of nerds that I'm not interested in.

Rainbow Rowell

#97. Levi's eyebrows were pornographic. If Cath were making this decision just on eyebrows, she would have been "up to his room" a long time ago.

Rainbow Rowell

#98. I choose you over everyone."
Cath took a painful breath and reached up with one hand to touch his chin. "I love you," she said. "Levi."
Levi's face broke open just before he kissed her.
He pulled away again a few seconds later ...
"Say it again.

Rainbow Rowell

#99. The music kicks in and maybe the bad times kick out and maybe the world's a little better for them than it was before.

Cath Crowley

#100. Love's like an egg. Break it, and you might still have almost every bit of yolk and white, but there's no way you're getting that back in the shell. And even if you could, there'd be still all the cracks.

Cath Crowley