Catherine Gilbert Murdock Quotes

Enjoy the top 62 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Catherine Gilbert Murdock.

“I ultimately decided to hold my tongue and settle instead for the comfort of ignorance. Not knowing the truth, I retained hope, and that hope I held like a smooth warm stone against my heart.”
— Catherine Gilbert Murdock —

“When you don't talk, there's a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase "happily ever after." Yet every couple I have ever known would agree that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied companionship. Yet these come at no small effort, and the girl who reads such fiction dreaming her troubles will end ere she departs the altar is well advised to seek at once a rational women to set her straight.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“She says you're not truly human until you've had your heart broken and you've broken someone's heart.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“With that, I hurled the slipper at him, not caring if I caused his decapitation. (I did not.) Marshaling what little dignity I yet possessed, I stomped down the corridor - challenging indeed with one shoe - and around the corner. I lay awake for hours. The prince had no right, not one, to indict me so, and if I had held the slightest hope of the book's assistance, I would have climbed at once to my wizard room for a spell with which to punish him. Death, perhaps, or humiliation. A croaking frog would be nice, particularly a frog that retained Florian's dark eyes. I should keep it in a box and poke it occasionally with a stick; that would be satisfying indeed.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

How could I pretend to be someone else when I was already failing at being the person I already was?

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“But it turns out that even if I don't talk a lot, when it's something that matters I still have a lot to say.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“It was like he was in a contest to see who could do the least work, only he was the only contestant.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“Everyone I looked at, their whole lives, did exactly what they were supposed to do
without even questioning it, without even wondering if they could
do something different.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“And have your mother put my head on a stake? Do you have any notion what that would do to my handsome good looks?”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“I could not but wonder at the queen's unprecedented civility, until I realized with a flush of shame that it was my own improved behavior that motivated hers. So it is that we in life determine our own treatment.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“And if I didn't, I'd spend the rest of my life wondering who I could have turned into if only I'd had the guts to try.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“I hate it when people make fun of me and it turns out they're right.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“So what if Brian made me feel like fireworks were going off inside me. He could also make me feel like a big fat clod of heartsick dirt. It was like he could take any emotion I had and make it ten times stronger. Which is great when it's happiness but pretty darn awful if it's anything sad.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“What is a staircase, but a corridor improved by elevation?”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

It kind of struck me how great it would be to go out with a guy that size. And if you, you know, got tired of dating him, you could always use him as a house or something.

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“I swear, every person I know gets far more satisfaction from doing good deeds than receiving them. Maybe that's the whole point in the end, all of us putting up with good deeds, tolerating them as best we can, counting the minutes until we have the opportunity to reciprocate.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“I ultimately decided to hold my tongue and settle instead for the comfort of ignorance. Not knowing the truth, I retained hope, and that hope I held like a smooth warm stone against my heart.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“Oh. Listen, this is really hard for me ... "
"What is?"
"You know. Being liked." I started to cry. I couldn't help it.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“I'd promised myself that I'd really work on talking more, talking about uncomfortable things, because I could see from Brian how well things could work out if you did.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

I milked, of course, and did some work around the barn, and tried not to think about Brian, which was like trying not to breathe.

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“Why was it that jam always coated me so?”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“But you know, even worrying about haircuts couldn't depress me. Because every time I started sinking low, I'd just remember about football. All this time I'd thought I wanted to be a trainer, when it turned out I wanted to be a player instead. I saw something I wanted to do and I decided to do it. The feeling of freedom this gave me-I can't even describe it. It was my decision. I chose it. I am not a cow.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“Still, I couldn't get over Dad calling those farmers. People might think helping is hard, but really that's the easy part; just look how good it makes people feel. Look how happy all those Red Bend ladies were about chipping in. It's the asking that's so painful. It takes real courage, real strength, to say you're not strong enough to do it alone. Mom must really be hurting for Dad to be so brave.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“And I have to tell you, as tough as farming is, the idea of farming when you're losing money year after year ... that's not life even, that's like death. That's eternal damnation.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“You can't think about how much you have left to do because that's just one thought, one sad thought, that'll make you bummed out all day long. Instead you've got to think about how much you've already done.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“Talk Back? That's really what it's called? You're supposed to walk into some church basement and say, 'I'm here to learn how to Talk Back'?”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“I saw something I wanted to do and I decided to do it. The feeling of freedom it gave me- I can't even describe it. It was my decision. I chose it.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“So break up with him.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“How many times I have wondered what my fate might have been had I accompanied my parents that rainy spring morning. Such musings, I recognise, are more than a trifle insane, for envisioning what might have been had no more connection to our own true reality than a lunatic has to a lemon.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“The truth that our futures are so often determined not by some grand design or deliberate strategy but by an ordinary run-of-the-mill head cold.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

According to Montagne legend, the mountain has forever been the abode of giants. Long ago a traveling pair of sorcerers, husband and wife, scaled the cliff into the valley, and the woman cured the giants' chilblains with ointments and the gift of fire. In gratitude, the giants built Chateau de Montagne out of the living rock of Ancienne, and from that castle the couple founded the kingdom of Montagne, using their magic to shield the country and its people from harm.

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“I could not help but wonder, that night and later, why my father would even mention my marrying someone who came from a country that my mother so obviously disliked. I recall wondering that distinctly, while somehow missing the obvious connection that this boy was a prince and that I, the niece of a king, was a princess.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Lord Frederick had been a stalwart member of the Montagne court since at least the time of my grandfather; this I knew. Even more, he had the marvellous ability to pull peppermint drops from my ears, which used to entertain me for hours.

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“Bend like the sapling you are. With time we shall find your oaken core.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“So it was that my life passed from the joyous realm of heaven to the choking and inescapable tortures of hell.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“As for the queen, I had no more interest in her company than in plunging my face into a nest of hornets.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“My downfall, inevitably, was triggered by food.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“A princess," (Queen Sophia) would proclaim, "requires a graceful and willowy carriage, not the appetite of a swineherd.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

I could not help but notice that in this regard the book, inanimate though it was, cared more for my welfare than any human in the castle.