Cath Crowley > Quotes

“I'm up for a Shadow hunt." She tries to let us out, but the lock's stuck. "That's weird."
"Is this like an omen?" Daisy asks.
Jazz unzips her boot and takes it off so she can slam it at the lock. "It's not an omen." Slam. "Tonight." Slam. "Is going to be great." Slam. "I've got a feeling." Slam. She puts her book back on and looks at us. "Okay, we'll have to climb out of here."
She stands on the toilet seat and from there to the toilet-roll holder and then heaves herself over the wall.
"Impresive," I say, and then we hear her slam to the ground.
"Less impressive," Daisy says.
"It doesn't mean anything," Jazz calls. "Trust me. I'm a psychic.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“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, A Little Wanting Song

“I know a few things about ghosts. The only way to stop them getting inside you is to spend every second of the day thinking about something else. Fighting like that makes you tired, and it doesn't matter how hard you fight anyway. They chip till they make a crack, and before you know it there's a ghost squatter in your living room. It's hard to get them out. Hard because they settle in. Hard because you like the company.”
― Cath Crowley, A Little Wanting Song

“She looks at me and at Dave. She looks out the curtain and strums her guitar. "Yeah," she says. "Oh yeah. This I can do.”
― Cath Crowley, A Little Wanting Song

“I kept thinking I wouldn't make it to Friday night. That something would happen before then to mess with my luck, something like a nuclear bomb going off so there was nowhere for us to meet.

"Pretty harsh," Leo said when I called him to come get me because she'd left me in the gutter with a broken nose. She never even called to check she hadn't killed me. A date like that makes a guy wish they would drop the bomb. Right over his house.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“What sort of party is this?" Lucy asks, staring at a group of guys who look like they walked off the set of Prison Break.
"The fun kind," Leo says. "Go have some. We'll find you after I talk to my brother."
"The fun kind?" Lucy shouts to Jazz. "I'm pretty sure I saw that guy over there on 'Crime Stoppers' last week." She's right. She did.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“What you leave
isn’t always there when you come back.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“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, Graffiti Moon

“I read somewhere that spiders can spin silk strong enough to hold the weight of a thousand trucks. I tried to imagine those lines of silver, thinner than air, stronger than steel. Sometimes I think that a hundred webs, invisible gossamers, connect Gracie and me. They coat our bodies, tie our limbs together, link our hearts. They can stretch across cities, countries – even anger. Unbreakable. I felt them that first time I watched her play soccer.
She needed to win so badly. I watched a new Gracie crack out of her cocoon that day. Grey, moth-like, she seemed covered in a dust that let her take to the air. Fly. They’re beautiful things, moths, with their dark patterned wings hooking on wind to push them forward. You have to be careful with them, though. Brush them just lightly, and they can’t fly anymore.”
― Cath Crowley, The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain

“Tell me about the sharks, Rosie," Dave said, trying to cheer me up. "Well, you can't tell how dangerous they are from their size. That's all wrong. The big ones don't always feed on meat." "How do you tell a dangerous one?" he asked. "Their teeth." "So what, you ask them to smile?" "If you're stupid enough to come close and see them smile," I said, thinking of Luke, "then you deserve everything you get.”
― Cath Crowley, A Little Wanting Song

“How can I explain to her that I just can't come home? It's too soon, it's too late; I do want to be with Helen every second of the day but at the same time I don't want to be with her at all. I want to have back what I felt at the beginning. I could no more leave her then than leave my arms or legs.
How do you find the beginning, though? There are no roads or signs. You start to doubt it even exists. The hardest thing isn't deciding that I want to go back to when Helen and Gracie and I were us. The most difficult thing is finding the map to get there.”
― Cath Crowley, The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain

“Michael comes to the door with Frederick. ‘Lucky I was here playing Scrabble,’ Frederick says, as they take Henry off my hands. I follow with the wallet and keys that have fallen from his pocket.

‘My father,’ Henry says as they tumble through the door.

‘My son,’ his dad replies, helping him towards the fiction couch.

‘Amy’s going out with Greg Smith,’ I say to explain why Henry’s drunk. ‘I found him in the girls’ toilets.’

‘In my defence, I was too drunk to know it was the girls’ toilets,’ Henry says.

‘Go to sleep,’ his dad tells him. ‘It’ll seem better in the morning.’

‘No offence, Dad,’ Henry says, ‘but unrequited love is just as shit in the morning as it is at night. Possibly worse, because you have a whole day ahead of you.’

‘No offence taken,’ Michael says. ‘You’ve got a point there.’

‘They should just kill the victims of unrequited love,’ Henry says. ‘They should just take us out the second it happens.’

‘That would certainly thin the population,’ Michael says, as he tucks a blanket around him.”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“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, A Little Wanting Song

“Did you forget to evolve?”
― Cath Crowley

“I think she likes post-apocalyptic fiction so much because she’s genuinely happy at the thought that the world might end.”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“I hear people talking about the feeling they get when they pain stuff in illegal places. Leo says he gets this fast-moving fear swinging through him, running from his heart to everyplace under his skin. I pain to get the thoughts in me out. I paint so it gets quiet under my skin.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“I made you collapsible. I put you in and raised you with string and made you stay
there with putty.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“I'm eclectic,' she said to the HDs once and I could see them trying to work out where she plugged in.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“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, A Little Wanting Song

“I take my hands off the break and let go. The trees and the fences mess together and the concrete could be the sky and the sky could be the concrete and the factories spread out before me like a light-scattered dream.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“I'm fond of Derek Walcott too. I could eat his poem "Love After Love." Just peel the words off the page and stuff them in my mouth.”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“I like the idea of her bottles. Memories that are nothing but a strange shape floating inside of you, memories that are nothing but empty bottles. And the good stuff, glassed in so it can't float away.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“Words can't save people from cancer or bring people back from the dead. Novels can't either. They don't have a practical use, that's what I meant. I loved that you read that poem to me that night, but the world remained unchanged.”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“Sometimes a memory is a thing that can't be explained using words.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“She's my soul mate,' I tell her.
'Then I am worried about your soul,' she says”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“I stopped doubting her predication after she told me I'd be allergic to guava juice, which was something I'd never tried. I drank a liter of it in name of scientific research. Dad called me Big Face for two week.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“If my like for you was a footy crowd, you'd be deaf cos of the roar.
And if my like for you were a boxer, there'd be a dead guy lying on the floor.
And if my like for you were sugar, you'd lose your teeth before you were twenty.
And if my like for you was money, let's just say you'd be spending plenty.”
― Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon

“Let’s talk about something else,’ I say, and ask him how things are going with George.

‘Things are better,’ he says, and I’m surprised. They don’t seem better. ‘Around this time last week she was telling you to fuck off.’

‘And I told her that I had decided not to fuck off.’

It’s an interesting tactic. ‘What did she say?’

‘She told me that if I didn’t fuck off, she would.’

‘I’m confused about how things are better.”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“Secondhand books are full of mysteries, which is why I like them. Frederick”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“I’m thinking of the transmigration of memory. Not the transmigration that happened in the Borges story, but the transmigration of memory that happens all the time – saving people the only way we can – holding the dead here with their stories, with their marks on the page, with their histories. It’s a very beautiful idea, and, I decide, entirely possible.”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue