Top 250 Katherine Center Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Reading love stories isn’t frivolous. It’s profound. It’s not escape, it’s the opposite. Trust me, and trust yourself: love stories are the best kinds of therapy. They aren’t shallow, they’re deep. Start looking and you’ll see it, too. Love stories make us better at love. In all directions. And getting better at love of course, means getting better at life.”

— Katherine Center

202. “At this point, it was more like a collage than a picture. Lots of little pieces and some glue.”

— Katherine Center

203. “Wow. There was something so inspiring about being so underestimated.”

— Katherine Center

204. “I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to escape. I’ve spent too much time on the run from hard things. But now I wonder if escape is overrated.”

— Katherine Center

205. “You can’t bring this story to life without coming to life yourself.”

— Katherine Center

206. “It doesn’t hurt to spend your life with people who see what’s great about you – in a way that you maybe never would have on your own. The people we love to teach us who we are.”

— Katherine Center

207. “But it was one thing to live your dreams in theory – and it was absolutely another thing to clumsily, awkwardly, terrifiedly do it for real.”

— Katherine Center

208. “It’s not all that often that people who’ve wronged you actually apologize. Usually, in my experience, they go on and on maintaining their innocence. Insisting that they weren’t so bad, or they had their reasons, or you were somehow partly to blame.”

— Katherine Center

209. “How could you find it there? That’s impossible.” “I’m pretty good at impossible things.”

— Katherine Center

210. “The more connection I got, the more I wanted. You know, like when you take a nap, but when you wake up you’re somehow sleepier than you were before? That was me, all the time – with humanity.”

— Katherine Center

211. “Light matters just as much as darkness. Play matters as much as work, and kindness matters as much as cruelty, and hope matters as much as despair. More so, even. Because tragedy is a given, but joy is a choice.”

— Katherine Center

212. “How is it possible,” I said, gazing at the sight of him in wonder, “that you were everywhere? All along?” Joe shrugged. “You can’t see when you’re not looking, I guess.”

— Katherine Center

213. “Isn’t it lucky when we’re drawn to people who can teach us things we need to learn?”

— Katherine Center

214. “A rom-com should give you a swoony, hopeful, delicious, rising feeling of anticipation as you look forward to the moment when the two leads, who are clearly mad for each other, finally overcome all their obstacles, both internal and external, and get together.”

— Katherine Center

215. “We dated for two years. My family loved her. Polite. Well groomed.” “You make her sound like a poodle.”

— Katherine Center

216. “Did you just call me chunks?” I asked. What on earth could that mean? “Choonks,” she corrected. “It means sweetheart in Trinidad.”

— Katherine Center

217. “Basically we tend to decide on what the world is and who people are and how things are – and then we look for evidence that supports what we’ve already decided. And we ignore everything that doesn’t fit.” “That.”

— Katherine Center

218. “I wondered if having faith in yourself was just deciding you could do it – whatever it was and then making yourself follow through.”

— Katherine Center

219. “The funny thing about the internet is that it is basically a collective hallucination. If you don’t join in, it doesn’t exist.”

— Katherine Center

220. “It’s called a time horizon- a sense of how much time we have remaining. For teenagers, it’s vast. It’s infinite. But as we get older, it shortens and shortens- and we can’t help but feel it. As it shrinks, it makes everything more precious. We appreciate the days more because there are fewer of them to come. And it’s really true. I felt it so much today. How fast it all goes. How much we have to be thankful for. What a miracle each breath is.”

— Katherine Center

221. “And that it’s always better to have what you have than to get what you wanted. Except for this: Every now and then, when you are impossibly lucky, you rise above yourself – and get both.”

— Katherine Center

222. “Maybe the best way to keep her with me was to embrace her spirit. To emulate her courage. To bring warmth and love the world that she always fearlessly had.”

— Katherine Center

223. “Whatever story you tell yourself about your life, that’s the one that’ll be true.” I lifted my head to give that idea my full attention. My dad went on, “So if I say, ‘This terrible thing happened, and it ruined my life’ – then that’s true. But if I say, ‘This terrible thing happened, but, as crazy as it sounds, it made me better,’ then that’s what’s true.”

— Katherine Center

224. “That was me, apparently: scared of cows, and scared of love.”

— Katherine Center

225. “The thing you’re afraid of is never the thing you should be afraid of.”

— Katherine Center

226. “It’s nice to have a reason to do something nice.”

— Katherine Center

227. “The story of your life is always full of mystery. You can unfold it on a table like a map, and study it, and understand it in new ways.”

— Katherine Center

228. “Believing in things that aren’t real? Making something out of nothing? Connecting dots that don’t need or want to be connected? That’s what all the best writers do.”

— Katherine Center

229. “It’s as if loving somebody – really, bravely, just all-in loving somebody – is a doorway to something divine.”

— Katherine Center

230. “And the truest thing I knew about myself was this: I was always happy when I was making things.”

— Katherine Center

231. “If you don’t reject the harsh things people say to you, then I guess, at some point, that means you accept them.”

— Katherine Center

232. “I’ve spent so much time wishing that what happened never happened. But it did. And the question I try to focus on is, What now?”

— Katherine Center

233. “There’s nothing like the mutuality of a hug – the way you’re giving comfort but you’re getting it, too.”

— Katherine Center

234. “Keep your eyes on the puff at all times,” I said, sounding like a coach. “Be the dollop!”

— Katherine Center

235. “Every now and then, something really, genuinely true cuts through all the chaos of life and just gets your full attention.”

— Katherine Center

236. “Tragedy is a given. There is no version of human life that doesn’t involve reams of it.”

— Katherine Center

237. “I didn’t know what to do with the sadness that was soaking into my heart. It felt so full, I could wring it out like a sponge. What did people do with sadness like this? How did they dry it out?”

— Katherine Center

238. “There is nothing – nothing – more socially awkward than standing alone in a crowd waiting for someone, anyone, to come and join you.”

— Katherine Center

239. “That’s why fiction,” I said, “is better than real life.”

— Katherine Center

240. “She argued with me,” Charlie went on, “and she made fun of me, and she told me I was wrong so relentlessly... that of course I had no choice but to fall in love with her.”

— Katherine Center

241. “Tragedy really is a given. There are endless human stories, but they all end the same way. So it can’t be where you’re going that matters. It has to be how you get there. That’s what I’ve decided. It’s all about the details you notice. And the joys you savor. And the hope you refuse to give up on.”

— Katherine Center

242. “I remember reading an article years ago about a study done on the shape of people’s eyes that found people with smiley eyes wound up happier overall. Statistically.”

— Katherine Center

243. “She just painted me exactly as I was. But glowing. As I really looked – but bathed in sunlight and warmth and a lovable mischievousness.”

— Katherine Center

244. “It’s the structure – that “predictable” structure – that does it. Anticipating that you’re heading toward a happy ending lets you relax and look forward to better things ahead. And there’s a name for what you’re feeling when you do that. Hope.”

— Katherine Center

245. “Is everything perfect? Hell, no. Everything’s a mess. A crazy, galloping, heartbreaking mess. You can’t fix everything. Not even close. But you can look for reasons to be grateful. More than that, you can work to create them.”

— Katherine Center

246. “We see what we’re looking for.”

— Katherine Center

247. “It takes a certain kind of courage to be brave in love. A courage you can only get better at through practice.”

— Katherine Center

248. “Maybe staying so busy was a lifeline out of my own grief. But I willingly made myself a supporting character in my own story.”

— Katherine Center

249. “But you can decide to do something joyful.”

— Katherine Center

250. “This love story really created a fantastic feeling of anticipation.”

— Katherine Center