Caitlin Quotes & Sayings

No one we knew ever believed that there was anything between us but the sex and some virulent allure, my dirty dishwater circling the drain of you. Not a pretty comparison but maybe it's the best we'll ever deserve, either of us. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

I used to be fast and loose with the term 'country' because I didn't know what else to call my music. I still don't. — Caitlin Rose

There is the sheer emotional, intellectual, physical, chemical pleasure of your children. The honest truth is that the world holds no greater gratification than lying in bed with your children, putting your leg on top of them in a semi-crushing manner, while saying sternly, You are a poo. — Caitlin Moran

And Caitlin smiled. I Wanted to put her smile in my pocket to look at over and over — Alex Flinn

Parish, get back into position!' Max warned. 'Do not go in there. I repeat, do not go in there.' 'We lose him now, we lose him for good,' Caitlin declared. 'And I am not going to let that happen.' 'You have insufficient backup. I repeat: insufficient backup. — Lindsay J. Pryor

T.V.'s weird because it's both the greatest gig as an actor potentially because it can be all this work for all this time, but there are so many question marks at every stage of the process. — Caitlin Fitzgerald

And do not think you shouldn't be standing on that chair, shouting, "I AM A FEMINIST!" if you are a boy. A male feminist is one of the most glorious end-products of evolution. A male feminist should ABSOLUTELY be on the chair - so we ladies may all toast you, in champagne, before coveting your body wildly. And maybe get you to change that lightbulb, while you're up there. We cannot do it ourselves. There is a big spiderweb on the socket. — Caitlin Moran

A phenomenon that might seem only backwards or silly when expressed at a social level becomes madness at the individual level. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

What do you do when you build yourself - only to realize you built yourself with the wrong things? You rip it up and start again. That is the work of your teenage years - to build up and tear down and build up again, over and over, endlessly, like speeded-up film of cities during boom times and wars. To be fearless, and endless, in your reinventions - to keep twisting on nineteen, going bust, and dealing in again, and again. Invent, invent, invent. — Caitlin Moran

I began to imagine orchestration where before I heard only the cacophony of randomness. Crazy people do that all the time, unless you buy into the notion that we have the ability to perceive order and connotation in ways closed off to the minds of "sane" people. I don't. Subscribe to that notion, I mean. We are not gifted. We are not magical. We are slightly or profoundly broken. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

He was bright, bright, bright, like a lantern above a pub door in November- he made you want to come in and never leave. — Caitlin Moran

Mother Nature, as Tennyson said, is "red in tooth and claw," demolishing every beautiful thing she has ever created. — Caitlin Doughty

For all that people have tried to abuse it and disown it. "feminism" is still the word we need. No other word will do. And let's face it, there has been no other word, save "Girl Power"
which makes you sound like you're into some branch of Scientology owned by Geri Halliwell. That "Girl Power" has been the sole rival to the word "feminism" in the last 50 years is a cause for much sorrow on behalf of the women. After all, P. Diddy has had four different names, and he's just one man. — Caitlin Moran

The problem with battling yourself is that even if you win, you lose. — Caitlin Moran

I am a mortician who tells you that you don't necessarily need a mortician. — Caitlin Doughty

He's no kind of gentleman.
That's all right. I'm no kind of lady. — Caitlin Kittredge

I used to teach at a private school, and the parents thought I loved their children. I did not love their children! I liked them well enough, but I was always delighted to see them go off for summer vacation. — Caitlin Flanagan

There is, happily, no limit to the faith of human nature in believing what it wants to believe. — Caitlin Thomas

My mother was very involved with Cesar Chavez's work on behalf of the migrant farm workers in California. — Caitlin Flanagan

A cult leader alone in his beliefs is just a crazy dude with a beard. — Caitlin Doughty

Sometimes, there was no getting over it. Sometimes, you lived with the empty place inside of you until you imploded on it, loss as singularity, or until the empty place expanded and hollowed out the rest of you so thoroughly you became the walking dead, a ghost in your own life. — Caitlin Kittredge

I don't care about lasting. I just want right now. — Caitlin Kittredge

A breeze blew softly, slightly rippling the water as it carried the heady scents of late Carolina springtime through the air. Honeysuckle. Jasmine. Ripe, pungent river mud. Ah, the world felt right. — Caitlin Rush

And the question is always "When are you going to have kids?" Rather than "Do you want to have kids? — Caitlin Moran

I once went into a meeting, and every woman put her a million-pound bag on the table. Then I'm there with my tote bag and anorak. And I'm like, well, I'm still the most important person in the room right now. — Caitlin Moran

For me, the good death includes being prepared to die, with my affairs in order, the good and bad messages delivered that need delivering. The good death means dying while I still have my mind sharp and aware; it also means dying without having to endure large amounts of suffering and pain. The good death means accepting death as inevitable, and not fighting it when the time comes. This is my good death, but as legendary psychotherapist Carl Jung said, "It won't help to hear what I think about death." Your relationship to mortality is your own. — Caitlin Doughty

The problem with the word "vagina" is that vaginas seem to be just straight-out bad luck. Only a masochist would want one, because only awful things happen to them. Vaginas get torn. Vaginas get "examined.".. No. Let's clear this up right now - I don't actually have a vagina. I never have. I, personally, have a cunt. Cunt is a proper, old, historic, strong word, and it doubles up as the most potent swear word in the English language. Yeah. That's how powerful it is, guys. If I tell you what I've got down there, old ladies and clerics might faint. I like how shocked people are when you say "cunt." Compared to this, the most powerful swear word men have got out of their privates is "dick," which is frankly vanilla. In a culture where nearly everything female is still seen as squeam-inducing and/or weak - menstruation, menopause, just the sheer, simple act of calling someone "a girl" - I love that "cunt" stands on its own, as the supreme, unvanquishable word. — Caitlin Moran

'School of Rock' was just once in a lifetime things; I want to be a doctor, actually. I'd go an do the sequel if they asked me to. — Caitlin Hale

The main thing I've noticed, however, is how unreasonable, self-absorbed and permanently outraged caffeine has made me. — Caitlin Moran

[When I was with the wrong man], it felt like our relationship was a gigantic puzzle - a huge existential and emotional quiz that, if I applied myself to enough, I would solve and gain the result of True Love. After all, the ingredients for us to be the perfect couple were there ... The problem was just that he was unhappy. I knew that. I knew it in my bones. When I found the way the way to make him happy, everything would be fine. He was broken, and I was going to fix him - then the good bit of our relationship would start to happen. We were just in the tricky, early bit of love, where I'd undo all the bad stuff and let him finally be who he was, secretly, inside. Secretly, inside, he did love me. My steadfastness would provide it. If it didn't work, it was simply because I hadn't tried hard enough. — Caitlin Moran

The undeniable feeling that, as you castigate a troll, he's rubbing his Red Dwarf mouse pad against his crotch and sighing, Angry liberal women typing at me. Oh yah. That's how I like it. — Caitlin Moran

But I do have conversations about the Patriarchy and I am having them with gay men. At eighteen, I am discovering what generations of women have long known. The natural ally of the straight woman is the gay man because they are others losers too. — Caitlin Moran

The silence of death, of the cemetery, was no punishment, but a reward for a life well lived. — Caitlin Doughty

Motherhood is a game you must enter with as much energy, willingness, and happiness as possible. — Caitlin Moran

Woman in heels stands a statistical likelihood of ending her evening with her shoes in her handbag, barefoot and demanding a piggyback to the taxi stand in order to "keep her tights clean." Men are invariably the pig whose back is called for. — Caitlin Moran

Normal is a bitter pill that we rail against. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

Dean flashed me a smile that promised rule-breaking and breathlessness. — Caitlin Kittredge

Why on earth have I, because I'm a woman, got to be nice to everyone? — Caitlin Moran

And, like all the best quests, in the end, I did it all for a girl: me. — Caitlin Moran

Most sexism is down to men being accustomed to us being the losers. That's what the problem is. We just have bad status. Man are accustomed to us being runners-up or being disqualified entirely. For men born pre-feminism, this is what they were raised on: second-class citizen mothers; sisters who need to be married off; female schoolmates going to secretarial school, then becoming housewives. Women who disengaged. Disappeared. — Caitlin Moran

Self-harm - the world will come at you with knives anyway. You do not need to beat them to it. — Caitlin Moran

Then you agree that you should keep me." With the smug satisfaction of an argument won, he propped his shoulder against the stall door. Her eyes picked him over as if he were a carved goose on a table. "Aye, I'll have to either keep you ... or kill you." "I vote for keeping me." A glint of humor shone in her eyes. "And I shall so long as you behave yourself." "And if I don't behave? If I try to escape?" "I'll hunt you down and kill you." The conviction in her voice chilled him, and yet he felt something else, an ache of pity that a wonderful creature like Caitlin MacBride should be compelled to have the heart of a murderer. "Then you leave me no alternative," he said lightly. "I shall stay. Think of it, Cait, we'll grow old together. We'll walk on the strand and watch the sunset, and you'll sing songs to me in that lovely voice of yours. — Susan Wiggs

Death represented a failure of the medical system; it would not be permitted to upset the patients or their families. — Caitlin Doughty

When you say you're not a feminist, if feminism hadn't existed, and you didn't live in a feminist world, you wouldn't be saying that, because you'd be too busy scrubbing out the toilets in back while cooking up your husband's tea and dying in childbirth at the age of 34. — Caitlin Moran

Accepting death doesn't mean you won't be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like, "Why do people die?" and "Why is this happening to me?" Death isn't happening to you. Death is happening to us all. — Caitlin Doughty

You know how you get rid of tears?" I asked. He shook his head. "You find somebody you love and you hug them. — Temple West

There are seventeen madhouses in the city of Lovecraft. I've visited all of them. — Caitlin Kittredge

To really love Joan Didion - to have been blown over by things like the smell of jasmine and the packing list she kept by her suitcase - you have to be female. — Caitlin Flanagan

It wasn't that she believed in voodoo, precisely - but she believed in the people who believed in voodoo - and that was scary enough.

-Coralee Ayers — Caitlin Rush

The more scared children are, the tighter they hug you. — Caitlin Moran

Chance smiled back at him, and Well, can you think of anything else I could do with my life that could ever possibly be half this splendid, half this important? I'm learning to read, Deke, and not just the handful of things men have been around long enough to write down. The history of the whole damned planet is written in rocks, just lying there waiting for us to learn how to read it. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

Female adolescence is - universally - an emotionally and psychologically intense period. — Caitlin Flanagan

I've learnt that you tend most to make a div of yourself when you're trying to cover up the fact that you don't know what you're doing. And that simply saying 'I don't know what I'm doing' is a massive relief. — Caitlin Moran

Men threatened by feminism either don't understand it or don't like that they now have to modify their own shitty behavior. — Caitlin Stasey

The horse is dead," she says and squeezes Soldier's hand. "From here we walk."
"Anyone ever told you you're sort of a creepy kid?" Odd Willie asks.
"All the damn time," Emmie tells him. "I don't bother keeping count anymore. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

Girls are the best readers in the world. Reading is really a way of kind of escaping so deeply into yourself and pursuing your own thoughts within the construct of a story. — Caitlin Flanagan

I am so tired. Tired--but so so so wired to the moon. — Caitlin Moran

My favourite place in the world - the south beach at Aberystwyth -has a sewage outfall pipe on it — Caitlin Moran

Being able to wear underwear brilliantly is such a key talent for a woman that there are even competitions to judge who is the best at it: Miss America, Miss World, Miss International, Miss Universe. You can call this "the swimsuit round" all you like - we know what it really means. It's the "bra and undies round. — Caitlin Moran

When God gives you no lemons - make nonmonade! — Caitlin Moran

Don't call it sexism. Call it "manners" instead. When a woman blinks a little, shakes her head like Columbo, and says, "I'm sorry, but that sounded a little . . . uncivil," a man is apt to apologize. Because even the most rampant bigot on earth has no defense against a charge of simply being rude. — Caitlin Moran

I inspect everything more closely, and there is about every surface - the river, the forest, the bark of the trees, the underbrush between them, even my own skin - there is about it all the unmistakable texture of linen stretched and framed. And this is when I feel the camel's hair brush and the oil paint dabbing tenderly, meticulously, at the space below my navel. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

Simultaneously, my two biggest heroes are Susan Sontag and Morticia Addams from 'The Addams Family.' — Caitlin Moran

I'm extremely superstitious. — Caitlin Kittredge

No story has a beginning, and no story has an end. Beginnings and endings may be conceived to serve a purpose, to serve a momentary and transient intent, but they are, in their fundamental nature, arbitrary and exist solely as a convenient construct in the minds of man. Lives are messy, and when we set out to relate them, or parts of them, we cannot ever discern precise and objective moments when any given event began. All beginnings are arbitrary. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

The thing is," I say to Paul Tillich, in my head, "the thing is, Paul, that ultimately, I don't think my anxiety is ontic, moral, or spiritual." I look at him. "At the end of it all, I just need some money, Paul," I say. Paul Tillich nods. If I were rich, none of this would matter. I just need some money. — Caitlin Moran

I come from grunge, and then Brit-pop, scenes where you boast about how little you spent on an outfit ... Now, it seems you must find The Dress, then The Dress needs to have The Belt, and a complementary but not overly-matching bag must be found which works with not only the correct hosiery, but with something to throw over yourself if you become chilly. — Caitlin Moran

When statistics come in saying that only 29 percent of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42 percent of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF SURVEY? — Caitlin Moran

Why would I do that? Why would I put all this effort into pretending to be ... less than I am. — Caitlin Moran

Like books before them, each of these songs, I know, could in the end prove to be the thing I need: a way out. A place to go. — Caitlin Moran

As a business, the funeral industry has developed by selling a certain type of "dignity." Dignity is having a well-orchestrated final moment for the family, complete with a well-orchestrated corpse. Funeral directors become like directors for the stage, curating the evening's performance. The corpse is the star of the show and pains are taken to make sure the fourth wall is never broken, that the corpse does not interact with the audience and spoil the illusion. — Caitlin Doughty

I could have written a misery memoir and instead I tried to make it funny. I never complained. — Caitlin Moran

There is a great gulf between the really creative person and normal people. The totally creative person does not have the rest of his life in proper proportion. — Caitlin Thomas

I live in Nashville, and I don't know how many people there would call me country. I really started in punk and anti-folk, but one of the reasons I originally gravitated towards country music is because most of those songs only use three chords. That was the easiest place for me to start, but I'm always trying to expand what I do. — Caitlin Rose

If you eat enough books, you start pooping out words. — Caitlin Moran

Any action a woman engages in from a spirit of joy, and within a similarly safe and joyous environment, falls within the city-walls of feminism. A girl has a right to dance how she wants, when her favourite record comes on. — Caitlin Moran

A library is such a potent symbol of a town's values: each one closed down might as well be six thousand stickers plastered over every available surface, reading WE CHOSE TO BECOME MORE STUPID AND DULL. — Caitlin Moran

Jesus, I'm sorry. I have wasted your time with a fake deal. I acknowledge that this means you are of the case, and that I am now totally on my own in saving the family from destruction. I shall go back to not believing in you again. We will revert to our former positions. Sorry about all that. Take care. Lots of love to God. Amen. — Caitlin Moran

If you take a moment to consider the state of the world, the thing you notice is that there are plenty of babies being born; the planet doesn't really need all of us to produce more babies. — Caitlin Moran

This is the happiest you've ever been," I told myself in the mirror in the ornate Victorian bathroom, two hours later. I was having a little girl-to-girl chat with me - "You've made a friend! You're making a friend right now! Look at your face, in the middle of friending! You are hatching an attachment! — Caitlin Moran

John Kite was the first person I'd ever met who made me feel normal. That when i talked "too much," it was not the point where you walked away, going, "You're weird, Johanna," or "Shut up, Johanna" - but that was when the conversation actually got good. The more ridiculous things I said - the more astonishing things I confessed - the more he roared with laughter, or slapped the table and said: "That is exactly how it is, you outrageous item. — Caitlin Moran

Most women I know love the idea of fashion, but the practicalities that go with it are just distressing. — Caitlin Moran

It seemed to me that this was the real reason people wanted to fuck so much. To get here. To get to this tiny, quiet place where there was nothing else to do but be with each other. Just to be two humans who had - for a short while - stopped wanting. This is the beautiful, final destination. The end of things. — Caitlin Moran

We need more women who are allowed to prove their worth as people, rather than being assessed merely for their potential to create new people. — Caitlin Moran

I told my girls, 'Look at Rihanna: She's one of the biggest pop stars in the world. She's really famous, really powerful, really rich. Yet in every single video she can only wear panties. Poor Rhianna! We'll know when she is properly powerful and successful when we see her in a lovely cardigan.' — Caitlin Moran

Planning a wedding is hell. Things are said. Doors are slammed. Quarrels about the most inconsequential things
yellow tablecloths or white? hors d'oeuvres set out on tables or passed around on trays?
are often pitched at such a level that it seems the combatants may never recover from them. Much of the anxiety, of course, is tribal. It is wrenching to have to open the sacred circle to admit an outsider. — Caitlin Flanagan

You upped the ante with the wrong vampire, Caitlin. — Lindsay J. Pryor

A culture that denies death is a barrier to achieving a good death. Overcoming our fears and wild misconceptions about death will be no small task, but we shouldn't forget how quickly other cultural prejudices--racism, sexism, homophobia--have begun to topple in the recent past. It is high time death had its own moment of truth. — Caitlin Doughty

Every time that you read a book that is worth anything, the author has put everything they know into that book; so when you read that book, you eat their life. You kind of go up a level; so if you read 50 books, you've lived 50 lifetimes.
CBC interview Q with Jian Gomeshi Sept.23, 2014 — Caitlin Moran

Art should never be a slave to commerce, but for all working artists that's exactly what it must be. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

When I hear women talking about how their wedding is going to be/was the best day of their life, I can't help but think, You just haven't taken enough MDMA in a field at 3 a.m., love. — Caitlin Moran

Word of advice, kid. This may be the Wild West down here, but you ain't a cowboy. You're not even a boy in a cowboy suit. — Caitlin Kittredge

Why can't we just loosen our belts, take off our heels, and cheerfully rot, like the boys? — Caitlin Moran

I've worked very hard to become comfortable with how death works and why it happens. I now know that death isn't out to get me. — Caitlin Doughty

Death might appear to destroy the meaning in our lives, but in fact it is the very source of our creativity. As Kafka said, "The meaning of life is that it ends." Death is the engine that keeps us running, giving us the motivation to achieve, learn, love, and create. — Caitlin Doughty

Flashlights would have been nice. Next adventure, Coralee was going to bring a flashlight. — Caitlin Rush

If you compromise in any kind of movement or any kind of wave of revolution, if you sort of play the game, things are gonna change far more slowly than you need them to. — Caitlin Stasey

If all goes well, we will be back in time for a proper memorial service [for your father], Ben. I promise."

Ben looked up, and all the bitterness was gone from his eyes, replaced somehow by both resignation and determination.

"And if all doesn't go well?" he asked, tightening his grip on Coralee's trusting hand as he led her outside to the driveway.

Kira's flawless features morphed into something like a smile, yet wholly without happiness or humor.

"Then you'll all be meeting up with [your father] soon enough, I expect. Either that, or you shall wish it was so. — Caitlin Rush

Love can bear anything better than ridicule. — Caitlin Thomas

A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead — Caitlin Moran