Top 40 Katrina Leno Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There’s always someone smarter than you... The sooner you accept that, the sooner you stop trying to be right about everything.”

— Katrina Leno

2. “Books can make you live a thousand different lifetimes, a thousand different lives. Books can make you immortal.”

— Katrina Leno

3. “You deserve to be whole. You deserve to remember. And you deserve to live.”

— Katrina Leno

4. “What if time really exists, like – everything all at once, all at the same moment, every single moment happening at the same time, over and over, for all eternity. Simultaneously.”

— Katrina Leno

5. “It is one thing to crawl into bed after a normal day, but it is another thing to crawl into bed after an adventure – that’s the best kind of sleep, the still-excited, still-buzzing kind of sleep where dreams blur into reality and it’s almost like the sleeping and waking worlds blur and become one.”

— Katrina Leno

6. “What more could I want?” I said. But I think we both knew the answer to that question was: Lots lots lots lots lots.”

— Katrina Leno

7. “But I guess it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing in the world. Have you ever googled a blobfish?”

— Katrina Leno

8. “The people we love get under our skin and crawl through out veins and find their way into our heart. They choke up our blood flow and mess up our breathing and tangle themselves through out bodies like wire. Like razors, like fire.”

— Katrina Leno

9. “Oh, By-the-Sea, island of Fernwehs and everything I had ever known and loved. How I would miss you – every part of you – but especially the smell, always the smell: of salt, of brine, of water, of spells, of potions, of feathers, and of what it would mean to leave it all in just two months.”

— Katrina Leno

10. “She was tied to the water, my sister. Moods like tides, temper like a hungry shark.”

— Katrina Leno

11. “Her head was on fire, pounding. She felt like she was on a boat like the bed was gently rocking back and forth, tossed among huge rolling waves.”

— Katrina Leno

12. “Hours later, days later, years later, she opened her eyes.”

— Katrina Leno

13. “I was tempted to tell her that babies born on By-the-Sea tended to always smell like salt, always crave the ocean on their skin, always look for the full moon or North Star to guide them home.”

— Katrina Leno

14. “What’s on your mind, Willard?” she asked, because she wasn’t the sort of woman who just handed things to people. She liked to make them work for it.”

— Katrina Leno

15. “Except there weren’t any princes on By-the-Sea. We didn’t need princes; we saved ourselves.”

— Katrina Leno

16. “Buy yourself some books, Lottie. They help with everything. Books can make you live a thousand lifetimes, a thousand different lives. Books make you immortal.”

— Katrina Leno

17. “You understand that this pain is endless. And that in and of itself is a kind of comfort, because you have found your own eternity. – From the essay “How to say good-bye” by Abraham Reeves.”

— Katrina Leno

18. “Have you every had one of those days where you keep repeating in your head: This is important. Remember this. Remember all of this.”

— Katrina Leno

19. “The combined smell of coffee and used books felt like the intersection of all things good and necessary.”

— Katrina Leno

20. “She was born for oceanside bonfires, long gauzy dresses and uncombed hair, the scent of salt like a blanket you can’t peel off your skin. She was born for the smell of water, for the way it sank into your bones, stained your skin, dyed your blood a deep, salty blue.”

— Katrina Leno

21. “The moment I started reading, I was no longer in my bedroom, no longer sad, no longer even myself.”

— Katrina Leno

22. “I knew that he would use that gun, because that is what small, scared men did: they used things more powerful than themselves to make up the difference. They hid behind weapons of mass destruction: big guns and bigger bombs.”

— Katrina Leno

23. “What time is it, Georgie?” “I’m not saying.” “Georgieeeee.” “I’m not saying it.” “Georgie, what time is it?” “Cute o’clock,” I relented. “It’s cute o’clock, okay, you psychopath.”

— Katrina Leno

24. “I wonder how long he’ll be sad. I wonder if his sadness will last forever, stretching on like an ocean. Drowning everyone he cares about. Drowning people he doesn’t even know. He won’t be able to control it. Oceans ebb and flow as they wish. They cover everything. They make everything blue.”

— Katrina Leno

25. “And besides that, people don’t always think the truth.”

— Katrina Leno

26. “There are enough ways to die on this Earth,” my great-grandmother had famously declared, “let ‘distracted reading’ be one less thing to worry about.”

— Katrina Leno

27. “I knew lots of guys who’d liked my sister only to have their hopes dashed when they found out she only had crushes on sleeping and tater tots.”

— Katrina Leno

28. “On the island of By-the-Sea you could always smell two things: salt and magic.”

— Katrina Leno

29. “No, she couldn’t remember the first book she’d eaten, but she could remember the first book she’d eaten purposefully. And that was maybe more important.”

— Katrina Leno

30. “I’ll have to build a widow’s walk,” she said, and then she looked at Aggie and smiled so Aggie knew that she could smile, too, that the rest of their lives wouldn’t be all sadness and loss.”

— Katrina Leno

31. “All the way back home, I could still feel him. It was like he had never left.”

— Katrina Leno

32. “It isn’t always easy. Returning to the past.”

— Katrina Leno

33. “Would a house like this ever be fully settled? Or would it ache and moan until the end of time, until all the newer, shodier houses had fallen to ruins around it?”

— Katrina Leno

34. “I think the important thing to realize, to try and remember, is that grief doesn’t have a rule book. You’re allowed to feel every emotion under the sun. You’re even allowed to invent new ones. I think I’ve done that a few times.”

— Katrina Leno

35. “Keep going, be nice, make friends.”

— Katrina Leno

36. “Too many carbs, not enough vegetables. Too much coffee and not enough water. Too much time sitting, feeling shaky and off whenever she had to walk somewhere.”

— Katrina Leno

37. “Because there was nothing in a girl’s history that might negate her right to choose what happens to her body.”

— Katrina Leno

38. “You can’t decide how much you love people. It just happens. If you have to think about it, then it’s not really real.”

— Katrina Leno

39. “I’m fine,” I said quickly, because we are taught as children that automatic response: I’m fine, when we are not. I’m fine, when we are anything but. I’m fine, when we can’t stop thinking about death, about dying, about ceasing to be.”

— Katrina Leno

40. “The island was back to its usual self, heavy with the thick heat of another summer’s end, a mugginess that could be picked up in your palms and saved for a later day.”

— Katrina Leno

41. “Things in my life had a tendency to be there one minute, gone the next.”

— Katrina Leno

42. “You are not calling the police because you heard a creak in a house filled with creaks.”

— Katrina Leno

43. “Three little girls all eating things they weren’t supposed to eat. Three little girls all eating things in order to fill their bodies with something other than the anger, the rage, that would otherwise consume them.”

— Katrina Leno

44. “He always said the same thing, no matter what book they were reading. He always opened it and brought it to his nose and inhaled deeply and said, “Ugh. I love this book.” “You say that about every book,” Jane would say, giggling. “Because I love every book! Don’t you just love books, Janie? I love books so much I could eat them.”

— Katrina Leno

45. “There’s a sadness in her voice but it’s a sadness that’s unsure of its place. She doesn’t know where to put it; she doesn’t know where it came from or how it works.”

— Katrina Leno

46. “The distance between two things so phenomenally far apart from each other crossed at the slowest possible rate... We were seeking our own light, and we had just found it.”

— Katrina Leno