Katherine Center Quotes

We are only as great as our struggles. We only become who we are in the face of them.

People are always beautiful when you love them.

The eyes see everything through the heart.

We all carry our mothers inside us.

You are writing the story of your only life every single minute of every day.

Beauty comes from tenderness.

Writing a novel is a lot like reading one.

We are at our finest when we take care of each other.

There is no tenderness without bravery.

That's what just hit me: How you really can't have everything. You have to give up the old to get the new. You can't be the child and the mom at the same time. You can't be your young self and your old self at the same time. You can't know what you know now and feel the way you did then. You can't, you can't, you can't.

Look for beauty in everything.

We're looking for stories that speak to us. We're looking for stories that connect us with something true. But, instead, a lot of the time we get strippers. All I'm saying is, when boys are writing the stories, the percentage of strippers is bound to go up. And real stories about real women kinda don't get written at all.

Our lives disappear, even as we live them.

The best things about womanhood might possibly even be the conversations. The chatting. The gabbing. The whispering. The hands-on-hips eye-rolling. The yukking-it up.

Success is doing the right thing for who you are.

Nothing that doesn’t push you past your limits can change your life. It’s true of work, it’s true of parenting, and it’s true — a hundred times over — of love.

And so my hope for you, good boy, as you grow taller every day, is that you will learn to take good care of yourself, and you will learn to take good care of others-and, someday, you'll see how those two things are exactly the same.

It's more important to be interesting, to be vivid, and to be adventurous than to sit pretty for pictures.

The human condition is imperfection. And that's how it's supposed to be.

Maybe the past is supposed to fade-and that's actually a kindness of human memory.

It's so easy to think that your strengths don't matter.

Nobody was perfect. Not even close. And everybody had wrinkles from smiling and squinting and craining their necks. Everybody has marks on their bodies from years of living- a trail of life left on them. Evidence of all the adventures and sleepless nights and practical jokes and heartbreaks that had made them who they are.

I like to write about people who are real and likeable. I like to write about people who tell their stories in that close and intimate voice we use with best friends. I love the closeness and honesty and vulnerability that come from characters who can talk that way.

My goal is to try to be as happy as I can - going through every day just as it is.

And despite everything I know now, I still believe, as I did when I was little, that there is an entire universe of things that my mother knows that I don't. I still believe that nothing truly bad can ever happen if my mother is around. I know it's not true. But still. It is true.

There is no question that the objects that surround us impact our experience of the world.

In fiction, you can be as true as you want. Real life is a different story.

I believe women are too hard on themselves. I believe that when you love someone, she becomes beautiful to you. I believe the eyes see everything through the heart. Nothing in the world feels as good as resting them on someone you love.

Sometimes there is no way to hold your life together. Sometimes things just have to fall apart.

If you feel lucky, then you are.

We build our lives in moments, and even the ones we can't remember become the story of who we are.

It's always better to have what you have than to get what you wanted.

Don't let anyone convince you that love doesn't matter.

I guess that's the upside of not being young anymore... You know from experience that the struggle always leads, in some way, to something better.

It's vital to learn how to make the best of things.

All my main characters are people I'd love to sit around having coffee with. They are people who will tell you honestly about the things that scare them and worry them and trouble them. Because those moments of connection between women-when they really decide to be honest with each other about their lives-are some of the best things in life.

Something good was happening. My life was rising from the ashes, and the sight of it left me feeling something like hopeful.

What matters most is how you respond to your heartbreaks and your disappointments and your fears. What matters most is who you become in response to them.

There on the sofa, as I nursed Maxie and her eyes slid closed, I said to the girls, 'I think nursing is where kisses come from.' I had been thinking about it. Nursing had to be the place where nurturing and sweet milk and soft skin and mouths and warmth all came together and started to mean something about love. I had always assumed kissing was a learned thing, like waving bye-bye or speaking a language. But since Maxie, I'd decided that it was innate, the adult version of something we know to do from the moment we're born. All of it tied together in the cycle of life.

You don't have to be perfect to be awesome.

Be brave with your life, so others will be brave with theirs.