Accepting uncertainty was the key to happiness.

— Catherine Lacey

Adults are taught to be anxious about not having enough sex while teenagers are shamed for wanting to have it all the time.

— Catherine Lacey

All your problems and all the answers to those problems exist in the boundaries of your body.

— Catherine Lacey

And he'd said nothing or something that amounted to nothing, and I tongued this memory like a burn in my mouth until the bathwater cooled and shook me back into my body where my fingerprints were ruffled.

— Catherine Lacey

And who is to say that loving a person isn’t just loving the idea of that person and not the actual person, all these incomprehensible clots of flesh with all their years gone by and vanished, all their history stored in basements even they cannot reach?

— Catherine Lacey

But we always avoided talking about these things—difficult things—and I wondered if that meant we'd be a little uncomfortable with or disappointed by each other for the rest of our lives.

— Catherine Lacey

But what had really happened? It was still unclear. Was it possible nothing of any significance had ever happened between us and our ending was just the sad process of realizing this?

— Catherine Lacey

Days are a finite resource, and it's best to protect the ones you have.

— Catherine Lacey

Every few minutes or so I would remember the look from the man who had wanted fifty cents, and I'd look at that framed memory hanging in myself, and it meant I was here, back in this sick city, but in other ways I was not here at all and anyone who looked closely could see that I had nothing to give, that I was a junk drawer, a collection of things that may or may not have had a use.

— Catherine Lacey

Everyone wants to feel like they could destroy a small-to-medium-to-large part of someone who loves them.

— Catherine Lacey