Top 50 Katherine Reay Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “My childhood wasn’t easy. I buried myself in books. I guess I’m a recovering book addict.”

— Katherine Reay

2. “People aren’t always what they appear, James. The gift is accepting them as who they are, not who we want them to be.”

— Katherine Reay

3. “All real lives hold controversy, trials, mistakes, and regrets. What matters is what you do next.”

— Katherine Reay

4. “How can I not believe that there is a God who exists and loves, when the people before me are infused with that love and pour it out daily?”

— Katherine Reay

5. “Don’t hang on to the past so tightly that you taint the future.”

— Katherine Reay

6. “You know what he said to me just now? ‘I know you.’ Like he saw me, the real me, and I was just what he wanted...”

— Katherine Reay

7. “Samantha will be just as polite as I am, my dear. She won’t be objective at all... no wait! She corrected my Shakespeare. Maybe she will give you an honest opinion. Let’s keep her.”

— Katherine Reay

8. “I mean, just because one soul will love another forever, doesn’t mean it should. It doesn’t always work out. But then, as you say, and I’ve come to agree, people change. And when two people figure out how to do that together, then yes, that can last forever.”

— Katherine Reay

9. “My mom used to have her own hymnal. It was as marked up as her Bible. She sang in the church choir for years. She said she felt closest to God in music.”

— Katherine Reay

10. “He reminds me of a comfortable sweater that you pull on, knowing it will keep you warm every time.”

— Katherine Reay

11. “Do you know what that’s like? A gun held to your head? Your life doesn’t flash before your eyes; it stops. Mine stopped, and there was nothing, nothing in me. I didn’t exist.”

— Katherine Reay

12. “Our understanding is so limited, Janet. Be careful not to assume God’s role or presume you understand his ways or the depth of his love. Promise me.”

— Katherine Reay

13. “Love in action is a hard and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

— Katherine Reay

14. “But it’s not the same – I know. Family means more. You can miss your family so much you have to look down to see your chest rise and fall, to confirm that it hasn’t been cut open and you’re not bleeding out and you’re still breathing. Friends can’t hurt you like that, nor can they fill that fissure.”

— Katherine Reay

15. “I’ll be there. I smiled. I’ll be there – when you call, when you’re hurt, when you’re sick, when you’re lonely, when life is overwhelming, when you’re scared. I’ll be there.”

— Katherine Reay

16. “Life simply carries misunderstandings along with consequences.”

— Katherine Reay

17. “Yes, Marianne. She lost her sense of right and wrong. She thought that because loving Willoughby felt good, it had to be right.”

— Katherine Reay

18. “I mean that reading forms your opinions, your worldview, especially childhood reading, and anything that does that has an impact. So call them friends, call some stories enemies if you want, but don’t deny their influence.”

— Katherine Reay

19. “Darcy’s got the tempestuous masculinity and brooding looks, but Knightley is a kinder, softer man with no pretense or dissimilation.”

— Katherine Reay

20. “My mind drifted to my last birthday. I had concealed the day away, hoping no one would find out. I realized as the sun flashed across the room that I had done that to escape disappointment. What if someone had known but still found it unworthy of celebration? What if, in fact, I really didn’t matter outside of my cooking? Each day I justified my life through purpose.”

— Katherine Reay

21. “Good, fully dimensional characters let us live their lives vicariously, and bad ones tell us about the authors.”

— Katherine Reay

22. “Waiting was arrogant and cowardly at the same time. It said she couldn’t be satisfied, was always holding out, and was never content. Also cowardly because she was leaving an escape open, never letting anything tie her too closely to a home. And the result? Beauty wasted and lying on a cold wood floor and books with no shelves of her own to hold them.”

— Katherine Reay

23. “He said that how people treat you is only 10 percent about you and 90 percent about them, so you need to be careful how you react and how you judge. You never know someone’s story.”

— Katherine Reay

24. “Have you ever confused your senses? Something taste like another thing smells?”

— Katherine Reay

25. “It’s like you live in those classics you love, in some odd third-person narration, as if you aren’t in charge of your own story. Who is, if not you, for goodness’ sake?”

— Katherine Reay

26. “Self-protection keeps you from love, Mr. Knightley-all love. I am so sad at how I’ve kept them at a distance-the Muirs, Alex, Father John, Kyle, Hannah... Anyone and everyone who has ever stood by me. I played God in our relationships. I determined their value by how much I let them in, by how much I let them determine my worth. I’m not God. And I don’t need to work so hard anymore...”

— Katherine Reay

27. “There was nothing “bright and sparkling” about this one. It was subdued, almost melancholy. Heroine Anne Elliot, perhaps my favorite of the Austen women I’d encountered, waited as circumstances and her world closed in around her. She helped where she could, got tossed about with little care – and she waited.”

— Katherine Reay

28. “Whenever I doubted the saying that hate wasn’t the opposite of love, I thought of Isabel’s father and remembered – indifference was.”

— Katherine Reay

29. “While I don’t believe in love at first sight, because I think it takes more work than that, I do believe that one soul can speak to another and find an inexplicably deep connection over a short period of time, unimaginably short, and know that it will never forget that soul, that moment, or the light it emits forever.”

— Katherine Reay

30. “Blood might be thicker than water, but both were thinner than money.”

— Katherine Reay

31. “But if these truths exist outside us and we do not determine them – nothing is dependent on our whims or happenstance. The truths are fixed, immutable, and eternal. We are the ones who will come and go, not truth.”

— Katherine Reay

32. “There it was. Mercy. Grace. And just as she’d told James, fiction conveyed change and truth and was loved and digested again and again because it reflected the worst, the best, and all the moments in between of the human experience.”

— Katherine Reay

33. “Lucy reached in her bag and pulled out the book, knowing exactly where to search. I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto. There it was. Mercy. Grace. And just as she’d told James, fiction conveyed change and truth and was loved and digested again and again because it reflected the worst, the best, and all the moments in between of the human experience.”

— Katherine Reay

34. “Artists create things that point us to beauty, to truth, to God.”

— Katherine Reay

35. “Austen really had a thing against Marys.”

— Katherine Reay

36. “I don’t think we get exempt from the pain because we live good lives. Some circumstances we can’t control – in fact, most are truly beyond our abilities. Instead maybe it’s how we get made new; it’s one of the only times we slow down enough to listen and receive grace, real grace.”

— Katherine Reay

37. “The window dressing may change, but as Austen shows us: human nature remains the same.”

— Katherine Reay

38. “People forget your face after a book tour or an infrequent appearance on Letterman, but put your face on your books and you’re handing them your life. They presume to know what you think or who you are.”

— Katherine Reay

39. “My dear, what in your life has ever come close to fair? That’s not how this life works.”

— Katherine Reay

40. “How often it is a small, almost unconscious event that marks a turning point.”

— Katherine Reay

41. “I’m not guaranteed a happy ending just because I make it to the last page.”

— Katherine Reay

42. “But I made it. And for some reason, I’m not worried about my job prospects. I truly believe I will be okay.”

— Katherine Reay

43. “I closed my eyes to hug him tighter and give him that elusive feeling of unconditional love and complete safety. The feeling we seek but, in this life and in this world, perhaps never quite find.”

— Katherine Reay

44. “You could lose yourself in a book and, paradoxically, find yourself as well.”

— Katherine Reay

45. “The room was dark and crowded, and smelled like history and cheeseburgers.”

— Katherine Reay

46. “Honesty is easier when you have no face and no real name. And honesty, for me, is very easy on paper.”

— Katherine Reay

47. “Never let something so unworthy define you.”

— Katherine Reay

48. “Your options are endless if you fight.”

— Katherine Reay

49. “Writing helps me process things, but these emotions are too much, too foreign. And.”

— Katherine Reay

50. “We didn’t talk much, and the silence hung like a silk curtain, light and lovely.”

— Katherine Reay