Cathleen Quotes & Sayings

There are no moral lectures in 'Lookaway, Lookaway;' there aren't even any lessons. But there is passion. It is a work that hides its craft but never its beauty, that is ambitious but never pretentious, that does not sacrifice nuance for power or power for nuance. — Cathleen Schine

Trying to explain or define grace is like catching the wind in a cardboard box or describing the color green. — Cathleen Falsani

All these years I've had a story in my mind, the story about us that never really existed. And because of that story, I've kept you framed up on the wall in a little box of nostalgic moonlight. — Cathleen Schine

Whatever you do, good or bad, sorry or not, you get punished, darling. Life kicks you in the balls. — Cathleen Schine

It was not that the woman boasted. Quite the opposite. She was modest to a fault, the fault being she insinuated her modesty, deftly, into almost any conversation, proclaiming her insignificance and ignorance, thereby assuring a correction. — Cathleen Schine

Of all the exotic aromas and experiences from my sojourn in Ethiopia, it's the frankincense I miss most. — Cathleen Falsani

For women, World War II had offered an opportunity, and often the necessity, to get out of the house to work. — Cathleen Schine

If having an imagination means imagining all the things you don't have - imagining, in fact, the impossibility of your own happiness - is an imagination a good thing? — Cathleen Schine

This is where Jean's stubbornness and, perhaps, God's stubborn grace came into play. "My definition of grace would be multifaceted, but part of it would certainly be God's passion for brokenness. He does, he really does love brokenness," Jean told me. "Grace doesn't obsess with ourselves. It obsesses with people and with brokenness. This is a hard place to live, but God is bigger than hard places to live. — Cathleen Falsani

Women are in positions of power the most radical of activists could only dream of in 1960. — Cathleen Schine

Don't think of Diana Vreeland's memoir as a book; it's more like a lunch. A bit of souffle, a glass of champagne, some green grapes - light, bubbly and slightly tart - all served up by an egocentric but inventive hostess. — Cathleen McGuigan

Grace to me is a little bit of extra help when you're feeling stuck or doomed or, probably, hopefully, out of good ideas on how to save yourself, and how to salvage the situation or the friendship or the whatever it is," Anne Lamott once told me. "I wish it was accompanied by harp music so you could know that's what was happening, but for me it's that extra pause or that extra breath or that extra minute's patience against all odds." On that first trip to Ireland, grace - the kick-in-the-pants, clarifying, cosmic-pause-button kind of grace - didn't just have a harp. It had an entire soundtrack ... — Cathleen Falsani

I'm sorry for Cathleen. She can be ... difficult.
Two-year-olds were difficult. That woman was a terrorist. — Jenny B. Jones

Good TV is not just TV about good behavior. — Cathleen Schine

One of my favorite passages in 'Leaves of Grass,' that breathless, exuberant poem so rich and full of innocence and joy and generosity and compassion, is 'Mannahatta.' — Cathleen Schine

Dress you? I'd rather undress you. We don't belong together. But you belong to me. I want you not as you might be. I want you as you are. — Cathleen Schine

Jesus must have had man hands. He was a carpenter, the Bible tells us. I know a few carpenters, and they have great hands, all muscled and worn, with nicks and callused pads from working wood together with hardware and sheer willpower. In my mind, Jesus isn't a slight man with fair hair and eyes who looks as if a strong breeze could knock him down, as he is sometimes depicted in art and film. I see him as sturdy, with a thick frame, powerful legs, and muscular arms. He has a shock of curly black hair and an untrimmed beard, his face tanned and lined from working in the sun. And his hands - hands that pounded nails, sawed lumber, drew in the dirt, and held the children he beckoned to him. Hands that washed his disciples' feet, broke bread for them, and poured their wine. Hands that hauled a heavy cross through the streets of Jerusalem and were later nailed to it. Those were some man hands. — Cathleen Falsani

Most of her feelings she deemed insubstantial and she sent them packing with barely a nod of recognition. But her feelings for her daughter she recognized as inevitable, irresistable, and she reveled in them. — Cathleen Schine

Some theologians argue that one kind of grace is better than another, and that some people think they're experiencing "divine" grace when it's actually just "common."
To me, that's like bickering about what color God's eyes are. (They're hazel, in case you were wondering.) — Cathleen Falsani

I was one of those children they used to call 'readers.' — Cathleen Schine

While it's true that you may lose your religion during the course of a lifetime, you never lose your salvation. Once you let Jesus in your kitchen, he just keeps on making peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and he never leaves. — Cathleen Falsani

We're so worried about the legal details of crossing doctrinal t's and dotting sociopolitical i's that we miss the big picture. The love picture. The one thing Jesus was really clear about: LOVE. If we could just get that one thing down, I believe the details would take care of themselves. — Cathleen Falsani

Oscar Wilde said: "Biography lends to death a new terror." Well, memoir adds that same promise to parenting. — Cathleen Miller

Together, on his back porch, his cigarette smoke rising like incense to the heavens, we spoke to the God of grace we both are so grateful to know up close and personal. It may be the most beautiful prayer I've ever heard. Jesus, for some reason you've given us another day, and you've set us in Narnia. There are people who still think it's frozen, and there are people who are longing to be thawed but don't know it. God, I pray that what you've called us to do would be the subversive work of the kingdom, that we would help participate in the melting of Narnia, and that people would come alive and would drink and dance and sing and just celebrate life in ways that are so marvelous that the world would press its face against the glass and see the redeemed celebrate life. Amen. — Cathleen Falsani

Music is a vehicle that propels me and so many other people toward a place we might call grace. — Cathleen Falsani

God can and does use anything God chooses to get our attention.
Who's to say the hawk wasn't sent as an agent of grace to catch my wandering attention and quiet what Buddhists might call my "monkey mind," which is more often than not swinging wildly from branch to branch on intellectual and emotional trees.
On the way back down the hiking trail after my encounter with the hawk in Big Sky, I stopped thinking and started looking and listening. That's when I realized winter was turning into spring before me.
Change was happening.
Creation, and perhaps the Creator, was speaking.
I just needed to be outside to hear the voice. — Cathleen Falsani

We're all trying to get everything perfect, but in the end no one can get past the fact that we're all flawed. We don't have any idea what we're doing. — Cathleen Davitt Bell

Outside, it feels like there is less standing between the Creator and us. There is a lingering visceral connection we can hear and see and smell, reminders of the bond between Creator and creation, like the mountain sage crushed up in the pocket of the sweatshirt I was wearing on a short, muddy hike the other day. In — Cathleen Falsani

In her inestimable audacity, Julia was the catalyst in my life for something beautiful. I hadn't anticipated her - hadn't even wanted her, truthfully - but there she was. A little something extra that made all the difference in the world. — Cathleen Falsani

I do all my shopping on the Web. I do much of my research online. I have a blog, too. It is definitely a distraction. It is definitely a blessing. What blessing isn't a distraction, though? — Cathleen Schine

Love letters lack taste. No restraint: falling off cliffs, going up in flames. — Cathleen Schine

There had been the two little boys. Now they were gone, too. They loved her and called her and sent her e-mails and would still snuggle up to her to be petted when they were in the mood, but they were men, and though they would always be at the center of her life, she was no longer at the center of theirs. — Cathleen Schine

They ate and picked sand from their chicken in the pink light. — Cathleen Schine

I laughed my way through The Stepford Wives. — Cathleen McGuigan

Michael Chabon has long moved easily between the playful, heartfelt realism of novels like 'The Mysteries of Pittsburgh' and 'Wonder Boys' and his playful, heartfelt, more fantastical novels like 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' and 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union.' — Cathleen Schine

Everyone who moves to New York City has a book or movie or song that epitomizes the place for them. For me, it's 'The Cricket in Times Square', written by George Selden and illustrated by Garth Williams. — Cathleen Schine

Elinor Lipman tweets like a nightingale with an eagle eye. — Cathleen Schine

Sometimes grace is having the strength to persevere through the storm.
Sometimes it's having the guts to rebuild, to take a chance, to follow your nose and your heart rather than your head.
Sometimes grace is finding out that your preconceived notions are dead wrong.
Sometimes it's being surprised by joy.
Sometimes grace is something you can feel even if you can't see it.
And sometimes it's a bowl of watermelon gazpacho when you were expecting Taco Bell. — Cathleen Falsani

'Blue Nights' is a story of loss: simple, wrenching, inconsolable loss. — Cathleen Schine

As Manhattan came into view, she experienced what she always felt on approaching the city from JFK; a mixture of excitement and calm, a sense of totality; of perfect, living, vibrant, chaotic peace. — Cathleen Schine

Grace has a way of sneaking up on you like that. When you least deserve it. — Cathleen Falsani

Life is full of surprises. Why is that always surprising? — Cathleen Schine

Stewardesses were a joke to many of us coming of age in the liberated Sixties. They were no joke in the women's movement that liberated us, however. — Cathleen Schine

In my stunted career as a scholar, I'd read promissory notes, papal bulls and guidelines for Inquisitorial interrogation. Dante, too. Boccaccio ... But after 1400? Nihil. — Cathleen Schine

Anyone who has read a Trollope novel knows that women did not have to wait until 1960 to feel trapped. — Cathleen Schine

...bottle green Jaguar. — Cathleen Schine

I've heard it said that grace is God reaching God's hands into the world. And the Bible tells us that we are part of the body of Christ, that if we let the Spirit move through us, we can become the hands of Christ on earth. Hands that heal, bless, unite, and love. I'd like to think God's hands are a bit like Grace's man hands - gentle but big, busy, and tough. God's hands are those of a creator - an artist who molded and shaped the universe out of a void, who hewed matter from nothingness. — Cathleen Falsani

What would it be like to have someone tell you that you were his own? That you were his own in a loving, protective way - not like you were his property. — Cathleen Armstrong

I've been fortunate in that I never actually read any Jane Austen until I was thirty, thus sparing myself several decades of the unhappiness of having no new Jane Austen novels to read. — Cathleen Schine

The night was mossy and hot... — Cathleen Schine

When Annunziata said she loved me or any of her thousands of other friends and beloveds, she was really saying, at least in my mind, "God loves you." To quote the singer/songwriter James Taylor, she showered the people she loved with love, always showing the way that she felt without holding back. Even as her body could barely contain her soul any longer, she'd open wide the gates of herself with a smile, that giggle, her twinkling eyes, and she'd let the supernatural love flow through her. Walking out of the chapel after her funeral, a woman I'd never seen before stopped me and said, "You're Cathleen, aren't you?" "Yes," I croaked, tears rolling off my nose as I fingered the prayer card with Annunziata's picture on it. Slipping an arm around my shoulders, the woman explained that she was one of Annunziata's former students and said, "She loved you so much." I know. — Cathleen Falsani

Alice Munro is not only revered, she is cherished, her stories handled lovingly, turned over and over, gazed at and studied and breathed in with something approaching awe. She has never, over the years, written the way any of her contemporaries have. — Cathleen Schine

But Fin would always be a bit of a romantic, at least when it came to books. — Cathleen Schine

'What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal' was thrilling in its light, deceptive tone, its subtle but irresistible momentum. — Cathleen Schine

I would say that grace is startling," Jean told me as he began retelling the story of how he wound up as pastor of Lagniappe Presbyterian Church, a growing congregation that meets in a glorified metal hangar in Bay St. Louis. "It's just startling. It isn't supposed to work. This wasn't supposed to work. — Cathleen Falsani

I grew up reading books about heroic collies. — Cathleen Schine

an unbroken line of unrelated people — Cathleen Schine

The garden stretched out in a soft drift, colors jumbled any way, an unmade bed of red and yellow and pink. Then came the trees. Apple, plum, and the Japanese black pine. — Cathleen Schine

America's last pioneers, urban nomads in search of wide open interior spaces — Cathleen McGuigan

Justice is getting what you deserve.
Mercy is not getting what you deserve.
And grace is getting what you absolutely don't deserve.
... benign good will. unprovoked compassion. the unearnable gift — Cathleen Falsani

Wait, go back to that Southern Baptist part," Julia said, interrupting, as she does.
"Are you a born-again?" articulating her question as if she were asking me if I were really a headhunter or a Martian.
"Yes," I said, "but I'm not an asshole. At least not theologically speaking. — Cathleen Falsani

Why grace? Because some days, it's the only thing we have in common. Because it's the one thing I'm certain is real. Because it's the reason I'm here. Because it's the oxygen of religious life, or so says a musician friend of mine, who tells me, "Without it, religion will surely suffocate you." Because so many of us are gasping for air and grasping for God, but fleeing from a kind of religious experience that has little to do with anything sacred or gracious. — Cathleen Falsani

I do not go out to dinner or to the movies with the neighbors, as I do with my friends. I don't make dates with them. I don't have to. — Cathleen Schine

A letter ... changes utterly the moment it slips inside an envelope. It stops being mine. It becomes yours. What I mean is gone. What you understand is all that remains. — Cathleen Schine

Butterfield Blues Band, Vanilla Fudge... — Cathleen Schine

If you spend all your time reading books that you only pretend to understand, year after year, there isn't much room for anything else. — Cathleen Schine

I love my bed. It is larger than a desk and better designed to hold books and papers. It is softer than a desk and better designed for naps. It is the center of all good things. And day or night, everyone knows where to find me. — Cathleen Schine

Alphabet Juice is the book Roy Blount was born to write, which considering his prodigious talent, is saying a lot. Did you know that the word LAUGH is linguistically related to chickens and pie? This is the book that any of us who urgently, passionately love words-to read them, roll them over the tongue and learn their life stories while laughing and eating chicken and pie-were lucky enough to be born to read. — Cathleen Schine

A tenth of Dostoyevsky is plenty for a seventh grader, I think. — Cathleen Schine

Female Chauvinist Pigs is smart, alarming, and extremely funny. With nuance and humor, Levy has written both a convincing expos of sex and desire in contemporary America and an important cultural history. I'm giving a copy to my mother. And my sons. — Cathleen Schine

Good morning, God. Another beautiful day. I'm still here, and so is the sun. Thank you. Right, now let's get down to business. — Cathleen Falsani

AUGUST 25 A Special Angel By Maria Gillard Thank you for my childhood, for my laughing heart and soul for all your magic, and for being bold Thank you for being my mom's best friend and loving me no matter what state I was in Thanks for chives and roses, popcorn and TV Thanks for always letting me be me Thanks for rides to swim meets and yummy chocolate cake Thanks for being strong and true when my heart was aching Thank you for the blankets and pillow for my head Thank you for the back hill and the Westside River bed Thank you for the smell of melting butter on the stove Thank you for the nickels you gave me for the store You were a special angel sent to all of us with your disguise of freckles, kisses, hugs and guts We know you're out there somewhere and you'll stay inside our dreams We know wherever you are there's a brilliant golden beam Watch over us, dear angel, as you go on your way and we will laugh and sing and dance again someday Amen — Cathleen O'Connor

Lines of gulls standing on glassy blue patches of wet sand. — Cathleen Schine

The honeysuckle was everywhere the day the letter arrived, like heat. Wild roses bloomed in hedges of tendrils and perfume. There were fat bees, dirigible bees, plump and miniature. It was a sweet, tangled morning, and the sun rose, leisurely, in a spectacular blush. — Cathleen Schine

Such arguments remind me of a scene from Woody Allen's movie Manhattan, where a group of people is talking about sex at a cocktail party and one woman says that her doctor told her she had been having the wrong kind of orgasm. Woody Allen's character responds by saying, "Did you have the wrong kind? Really? I've never had the wrong kind. Never, ever. My worst one was right on the money."
Grace works the same way. It is what it is and it's always right on the money. You can call it what you like, categorize it, vivisect it, qualify, quantify, or dismiss it, and none of it will make grace anything other than precisely what grace is: audacious, unwarranted, and unlimited. — Cathleen Falsani

In 'Pictures from an Institution,' Randall Jarrell was able to transcend the academic novel by simply ignoring it, writing a comedy with no plot at all beyond his own pleasure in language and humanity itself. — Cathleen Schine

[On writer George Moore:] ... I grew curious about Moore. Yet when at the rehearsal of 'Countess Cathleen' in some dark by-way of London, I was told he was present, I cannot recall any form, only an irritation in the dusty atmosphere. — Susan Mitchell

One really understands testicles after reading 'The Family Jewels,' and one is gratified. — Cathleen Schine

No, it's like you get an idea in your head ... no, it's more like you get and idea in your heart. — Cathleen Schine

Laughter is grace in its gaseous form. — Cathleen Falsani

ACTIONS ARE THE TRUEST MEASURE of intent. — Cathleen Benko

'Emma' is my favorite Jane Austen novel - one of my favorite novels period; a novel about intelligence outsmarting itself, about a complicated, nuanced, irresistible heroine who does everything wrong. — Cathleen Schine

My nun, which is how I think of her, was the most profound witness for God's love I've ever encountered in this world. She was a magnet for lost souls, a petite fortress of strength and unconditional love. What this sprightly, silly, lovely woman did from the obscurity of a faded convent in Rust Belt Chicago was to fulfill in a passionate, tireless way the supreme commandment of Jesus' gospel every day of her life. — Cathleen Falsani

Then round about the age of twenty-five, I was tired of being tired of being scared about doing something that, if I deconstruct it honestly, might somehow cost me my salvation and make God love me less. When I understood, in God's grace, that there was nothing - not a thing - I could do to make God love me any less or any more, when I understood that there was nothing wrong or right about who I am in God's eyes, that I'm just loved, I started to live. Boldly. Or at least as boldly as I can muster much of the time. — Cathleen Falsani

When it's time to settle into the serial monogamy inherent in writing a book (although, between you and me, I secretly practice biblio-polygamy - I can't help myself), — Cathleen Rountree

'Use Me' is a wonderfully satisfying book. — Cathleen Schine

I spend a lot, a lot, a lot of time on the Web. — Cathleen Schine

It wasn't the fog I minded, Cathleen. I really love fog. [ ... ] It hides you from the world and the world from you. You feel that everything has changed, and nothing is what it seemed to be. No one can find or touch you any more. — Eugene O'Neill

Maybe that's why Jesus was so fond of parables: Nothing describes the indescribable like a good yarn. — Cathleen Falsani

Betty ran to the door in time to see a handsome young man dashing through the rain toward the house beside her daughter, both of them in pants embroidered with sea creatures - blue whales on his yellow pants, pink lobsters on her ill-fitting brick red pants - and matching pastel green cotton sweaters. When did Miranda buy such odd clothes? She imagined the two of them spotting eachother somewhere, kindred spirits, and starting up a conversation about their shared hobby of Extreme Wasp Attire. — Cathleen Schine

Biffi said it was more American on an air force base in Crete than it was in Times Square. — Cathleen Schine

Everyone experiences grace, even if they don't realize it.
It's kind of like Moby's music. You could ask your average sixty-something-year-old retired banker in Connecticut if he's ever heard of Moby and/or his music and the response you'd receive more than likely would be a resounding, "No - what's a Moby?"
But if you say, "Remember that American Express commercial where Tiger Woods is putting around New York City? Remember the song playing? That was Moby."
"Oh, then, OK. I guess I have heard Moby," our theoretical retired banker in New Canaan might say.
"So ... what exactly is a Moby?"
That's like grace. Not that grace is a pretentious vegan techno-rocker, but you get the idea.
Grace is everywhere, all around us, all of the time. We only need the ears to hear it and the eyes to see it. — Cathleen Falsani

Nathaniel Rich wrote 'Odds Against Tomorrow' well before Hurricane Sandy and its surge crashed onto the isle of Manhattan, well before the streets were flooded and the subways drowned, only the Goldman Sachs building sparkling above the darkened avenues. — Cathleen Schine