Top 40 Catriona Ward Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “When people say something is “unthinkable,” what they usually mean is that they don’t want to think it. They are resistant to an idea. But that is not what unthinkable means. I understand that, now. It means to be confronted with a thought so vast, dark, and monstrous that it will not fit into any known shapes in your mind. It is poison and madness flowering behind your eyes.”

— Catriona Ward

2. “The human heart is deep and dark with many chambers. Things hide down there.”

— Catriona Ward

3. “Through the open window the night is dying. Dark air full of the promise of light, the heavy pause before dawn. Below, the sea is hung with mist, which is His breath on the water. Somewhere beneath the waves His slow, heavy coils are moving in the deep.”

— Catriona Ward

4. “It is a kind of privilege, to witness the darkness.”

— Catriona Ward

5. “Death deserves a witness. Evan a bird should have that.”

— Catriona Ward

6. “I like this kind of place, where you’re in between one thing and another. Hallways, waiting rooms, lobbies and so on; rooms where nothing is actually supposed to happen. It relieves a lot of pressure and lets me think.”

— Catriona Ward

7. “The first thing I hate is called a Russian doll. It holds a smaller version of itself inside it, and another inside that and so on. How awful. They are prisoners. I imagine them all screaming in the dark, unable to move or speak. The doll’s face is broad and blankly smiling. It looks so happy to be holding its children captive.”

— Catriona Ward

8. “Everything in life is a rehearsal for loss. Only the smart people know it.”

— Catriona Ward

9. “Clocks are everywhere if you know how to recognize them. A dandelion is a clock, obviously. Rice pouring into a bowl is a clock, each grain marking the passage of time. A school assignment, an apple as it withers, a tree waiting for spring. Each of these things measures living moments, what remains before death. Tick, tock.”

— Catriona Ward

10. “He looks at me. His round eyes seem flat now, like bad coins. “There’s a monster inside each of us,” he says. “If you let yours out, Ted, it might not eat you.”

— Catriona Ward

11. “If one thing comes to light, others follow. They are like that, secrets, they move in flocks like birds.”

— Catriona Ward

12. “Breaking me, then mending me, over and over – that was my mother.”

— Catriona Ward

13. “Truth has weight. It leaves footprints in your mind.”

— Catriona Ward

14. “It’s possible to feel the horror of something and to accept it all at the same time. How else could we cope with being alive?”

— Catriona Ward

15. “I don’t recall names but I have my ways of judging and remembering people. The first one is: would they be kind to my cat?”

— Catriona Ward

16. “The past always has its hands around your neck, doesn’t it?”

— Catriona Ward

17. “I think I would do OK in prison, because I like small enclosed spaces and being alone.”

— Catriona Ward

18. “She likes to read, but you never know what books are going to do to you, and she can’t afford to be taken off guard.”

— Catriona Ward

19. “I’ll tell you a secret, kitten. Everyone feels like that sometimes. Sometimes things get bad, and you can’t see a future ahead. It’s all cloudy, like the sky on a rainy day. But life moves very fast. Things never stay the same forever, even the bad things. The clouds will blow away. They always do, I promise.”

— Catriona Ward

20. “You can only do three things with danger: run away from it, fight it, or make friends with it. I don’t know which one to do.”

— Catriona Ward

21. “Writers are monsters, really. We eat everything we see.”

— Catriona Ward

22. “Potatoes make everything okay.”

— Catriona Ward

23. “People who have lived together for many generations share a special kind of madness.”

— Catriona Ward

24. “I am not dead, I can tell, because there is a strand of spaghetti on the green tile floor. What happens after death may be bad or good but there won’t be spilled spaghetti.”

— Catriona Ward

25. “My heart is a dark passage, lined with ranks of gleaming jars. In each one something floats. The past, preserved as if in spirit. Here is the scent of grass and the sea, here the creak of wheels on a rough path, here a bright yellow gull’s beak. The sensation of blood drying on my cheek in the wind. Abel crying for his mother, Uncle’s hand on me. Silver on a white collarbone. The knowledge of loss, which comes like a blow to the heart or the stomach. It does not reach your mind until later.”

— Catriona Ward

26. “We love them – or, need them. Those two can get mixed up.”

— Catriona Ward

27. “I had always felt that there was something wrong with me. I was like one of the tracings I did on her baking paper, a bad one, where the comic book underneath slipped; the lines slewed across the page, and the picture became a monstrous version of itself.”

— Catriona Ward

28. “The little girl looks at me. Horror on her small white face, and fear. She puts her thin child’s body between me and him.”

— Catriona Ward

29. “It’s the kind of laughter that only comes to kids, I think. Grownups are too used to the absurdity of the world.”

— Catriona Ward

30. “Kids are mirrors, reflecting back everything that happens to them. You’ve got to make sure they’re surrounded by good things.”

— Catriona Ward

31. “The thing about anger is, you mustn’t let it drop or you might find out how you really feel.”

— Catriona Ward

32. “Bad things are happening. It seems best to sleep until they stop.”

— Catriona Ward

33. “I think about the round world, which if you travel far enough, only brings you back to the same place.”

— Catriona Ward

34. “Thoughts are a door that the dead walk through.”

— Catriona Ward

35. “There can be comfort in a disguise. Being who you are can be lonely.”

— Catriona Ward

36. “When she turns out the light the dark is rich and complete. The house breathes about her like a person, boards groaning, releasing the stored heat of the day. Stars peer through the window.”

— Catriona Ward

37. “I wanted a friend to look after us. The weird thing is, now that I have one, all I want to do is look after him.”

— Catriona Ward

38. “Children are like a chain around your heart or neck, and they pull you in every direction.”

— Catriona Ward

39. “No one told me that grief would feel so much like fear.”

— Catriona Ward

40. “Lulu turns and Dee sees that she has no face. Red birds explode from her head in a cloud.”

— Catriona Ward

41. “Moms are like the desert, too. Sometimes you can’t stop them.”

— Catriona Ward

42. “The young feel pain intensely, I think, because they don’t know yet how deep it can go.”

— Catriona Ward

43. “If there’s anything better than a cat on the bed, I don’t know about it.”

— Catriona Ward

44. “So many questions asked about what I did that night,” I say. “No one has asked, what did that night do to me?”

— Catriona Ward