Top 200 Katherine Center Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “I don’t think trying to be happy means you can never be sad,” I said. “Right?”

— Katherine Center

102. “I’d saturate my brain with such an overabundance of gratitude for every little joy around me that I wouldn’t have any room for envy, or loneliness, or sorrow... I’d be too insulated by happiness to even care.”

— Katherine Center

103. “Well, for example, happy people are more likely to register joy than unhappy people. So if you take two people who have experienced a day of, say, fifty percent good things and fifty percent bad things, an unhappy person would remember more of the bad.”

— Katherine Center

104. “Happiness is more about appreciation than acquisition.”

— Katherine Center

105. “John Gottman is a researcher who looks at what marriages need to thrive, and one of the many things he talks about is creating a “culture of appreciation” in a relationship – where partners focus on and savor the things about each other that they love.”

— Katherine Center

106. “I had a purpose. I had a reason to take a shower every morning. I had a reason to take care of myself. More than that, I was figuring out how doing something for other people could – in fact – be doing something for yourself. Amazing.”

— Katherine Center

107. “I have a theory that we are at our meanest when we feel threatened. People really seem to do their worst when they think you’re out to hurt them, or steal from them, or take something that’s rightfully theirs.”

— Katherine Center

108. “The most important thing to remember is that getting what you want doesn’t make you happy. Happiness is more about appreciation than acquisition.”

— Katherine Center

109. “I gave you Jake because you’re headstrong and accident prone, and he’s our medic and I trust him to patch you up. I gave you Jake because you’re the best map reader we’ve got, and he’s damn near blind. And I gave you Jake because you absolutely never believe in yourself – and he finds a way to believe in you every damn day.”

— Katherine Center

110. “Even people with terrible people skills didn’t have people skills this terrible.”

— Katherine Center

111. “Choose joy on purpose.”

— Katherine Center

112. “But Beckett, for all his posturing, talked in scribbles. He gave lines of information with gaping spaces in between.”

— Katherine Center

113. “If you play it right, your struggles might even lead you to your strengths.”

— Katherine Center

114. “Yes! You’re going to be okay. Aren’t you glad to know that?” “Undecided.” Then, as she came in for a final hug, she said, “I just need you to remember that, okay?” She squeezed a little tighter. “There are all kinds of happy endings.”

— Katherine Center

115. “Ian kept checking with me to see if I was ready, and I kept shaking my head. I got cold, in my sundress, but I still didn’t want to leave the fire.”

— Katherine Center

116. “I wondered if stating a preference to the universe just dared it to mess with me.”

— Katherine Center

117. “It’s a deliberate kind of joy. It’s a conscious kind of joy. It’s joy on purpose.” Duncan squinted like he really wasn’t sold. “In clown socks and a tutu.” “I’m telling you. I know all about darkness. That’s why I am so hell-bent, every damn day, on looking for the light.”

— Katherine Center

118. “But the things we remember are what we hold on to, and what we hold on to becomes the story of our lives. We only get one story. And I am determined to make mine a good one.”

— Katherine Center

119. “You can’t just wish strength for yourself. Or wisdom. Or resilience. Those things have to be earned.”

— Katherine Center

120. “Exhaustion is a friend to the grieving.”

— Katherine Center

121. “I guess who you are always seems normal to you because you don’t know what it feels like to be anyone else.”

— Katherine Center

122. “When things got tough, I went for a run. I ran in the rain. I ran at night sometimes – or at four in the morning.”

— Katherine Center

123. “I’m at my very best when things are at their very worst.”

— Katherine Center

124. “Longing for you gave me something to hope for. Even when it was hopeless.”

— Katherine Center

125. “I wasn’t a stranger to grieving, to the way it drowned you but didn’t kill you – only kept you submerged for so long you forgot what air and sunshine even felt like. I knew that grief set its own timeline, and that the only way out was through.”

— Katherine Center

126. “I wanted to grab onto him like a life preserver in an empty ocean.”

— Katherine Center

127. “We didn’t fix everything for each other – but we didn’t have to. We just made a choice to be there. Which counted for a lot.”

— Katherine Center

128. “The lived on the mistaken assumption that their lives mattered, that life was essentially fair, that it was all going to wind up happy in the end. I knew what they didn’t – that everything you care about will disappear, that deserving a happy life doesn’t mean you can get one, and that there really is no one in the entire world you can count on but yourself.”

— Katherine Center

129. “You can’t live your whole life in fear. You can’t insulate yourself from everything. Kids get hurt all the time – but we don’t make them wear bicycle helmets everywhere. You take reasonable precautions, and then you hope for the best. That’s all you can do.”

— Katherine Center

130. “I made a choice to get inspired. I made lists of reasons to feel hopeful. I forced myself to look at the sky and see green.”

— Katherine Center

131. “This was a moment in time that was already lost.”

— Katherine Center

132. “In some ways, if I’m honest, giving up felt good. It certainly took the pressure off. Staying hopeful was exhausting.”

— Katherine Center

133. “We’re just going to have to wait for-” Then she saw us, and looked Ian over, in his flannel shirt and jeans. “The Brawny paper-towel guy.”

— Katherine Center

134. “That’s just the human condition, sweetheart. We’re always doomed to waste our time.”

— Katherine Center

135. “I still found human beings – and conversation – to be the best possible distraction.”

— Katherine Center

136. “Because you absolutely never believe in yourself – and he finds a way to believe in you every damn day.”

— Katherine Center

137. “Love is always a disaster, darling. That’s what makes it fun.”

— Katherine Center

138. “You know what?” my dad said, reading us perfectly, “I think our girl needs some rest.” He’d been with my mom for thirty years. He was an expert on damage control.”

— Katherine Center

139. “You let your grief make you bitter. You let your suffering make you cruel. Want to know what that makes you? A villain. That’s every comic book villain ever! They suffer, and then they inflict suffering on others. Good guys do the opposite. Good guys suffer, too – but they respond by helping.”

— Katherine Center

140. “The things you think about determine the things you think about” – meaning the more you focus on something, the more likely your brain is to focus on it.”

— Katherine Center

141. “It did feel good to get out. The wind. The ocean. The stars. The universe. I was surprised how soothing it was to be in the presence of things greater than myself.”

— Katherine Center

142. “I have a theory that we are at our meanest when we feel threatened.”

— Katherine Center

143. “I would never tell you that the life you wanted couldn’t have been exactly as great as you planned. But you have to live the life you have. You have to find inspiration in the struggle, and pull joy out of the hardship.”

— Katherine Center

144. “She knew that joy and sorrow walked side by side. She knew that being alive meant risking one for the other. And she also knew, as I was starting to understand in a whole new way, that it was always better to dance than to refuse.”

— Katherine Center

145. “People who want to be famous think it’s the same thing as being loved, but it’s not. Strangers can only ever love a version of you. People loving you for your best qualities is not the same as people loving you despite your worst.”

— Katherine Center

146. “The things we remember are what we hold on to. And what we hold on to becomes the story of our lives.”

— Katherine Center

147. “It made me miss my mom in a way I never expected. Or maybe not her, exactly – but the person she could have been. The relationship we could have had. I’d always wondered if other people’s mothers were as good as they seemed.”

— Katherine Center

148. “Joy is an antidote to fear. To anger. To boredom. To sorrow.” “But you can’t just decide to feel joyful.” “True. But you can decide to do something joyful.”

— Katherine Center

149. “That day changed my life more than any other ever has.”

— Katherine Center

150. “The point is to be happy anyway. As often as you can.”

— Katherine Center