Top 200 Katherine Center Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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

102. “Love makes you better because it’s hard. Taking risks makes you better because it’s terrifying. That’s how it works. You’ll never get anything that matters without earning it. And even what you get” – she lifted her chin in defiance – “you won’t get to keep. Joy is fleeting. Nothing lasts. That’s exactly what courage.”

— Katherine Center

103. “Ten years I’d simmered in my own self-righteousness, holding my grudge against her as if the only way to win was to stay mad the longest.”

— Katherine Center

104. “It’s always better to have what you have than to get what you wanted.”

— Katherine Center

105. “I don’t think trying to be happy means you can never be sad,” I said. “Right?”

— Katherine Center

106. “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

107. “Choose joy on purpose.”

— Katherine Center

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

— Katherine Center

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

— Katherine Center

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

— Katherine Center

111. “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

112. “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

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

— Katherine Center

114. “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

115. “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

116. “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

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

— Katherine Center

118. “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

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

— Katherine Center

120. “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

121. “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

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

— Katherine Center

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

— Katherine Center

124. “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

125. “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

126. “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

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

— Katherine Center

128. “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

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

— Katherine Center

130. “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

131. “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

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

— Katherine Center

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

— Katherine Center

134. “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

135. “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

136. “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

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

— Katherine Center

138. “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

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

— Katherine Center

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

— Katherine Center

141. “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

142. “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

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

— Katherine Center

144. “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

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

— Katherine Center

146. “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

147. “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

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

— Katherine Center

149. “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

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

— Katherine Center