Helen Brown Quotes

“Guilt isn't in cat vocabulary. They never suffer remorse for eating too much, sleeping too long or hogging the warmest cushion in the house. They welcome every pleasurable moment as it unravels and savour it to the full until a butterfly or falling leaf diverts their attention. They don't waste energy counting the number of calories they've consumed or the hours they've frittered away sunbathing.Cats don't beat themselves up about not working hard enough. They don't get up and go, they sit down and stay. For them, lethargy is an art form. From their vantage points on top of fences and window ledges, they see the treadmills of human obligations for what they are - a meaningless waste of nap time.”

“I love you, Cleo," he said, the words finally coming to him, with no effort at all because of how true they were. "I love you so much it hurts."Her eyes widened. "What did you just say?"Magnus almost laughed. "I think you heard me right.”

“My gramps is a lot like you. No sense of adventure. All he does is sit in his urn...”

“Annabelle, I'm going to kill you!" I cried, frowning at the mess. Then I glanced down the stairway and gasped.It looked like someone had beaten me to it.”

“Ser Cleos looked like a weasel, fought like a goose, and had the courage of an especially brave ewe.”

“A cat chooses its owner, not the other way around.”

“Then there was the realisation that I didn't actually feel that much better when I was thin(ner). In fact the 'thin' version felt worse because I lived with hunger clawing at my stomach all the time, and in fear that I was going to get fat again. After years of neuroticism I'd finally understood those who loved me would continue to put up with me fat or thin, and those who didn't ignored me. As a middle-aged woman I was pretty much invisible anyway. To pass unnoticed through an image-obsessed society is surprisingly liberating.”

“In the back of the fridge I checked out some stewed apples destined to fester. I examined them closely and reckoned they had only a day to go, even by my standards. I spooned the apples into tiny bowls, tossed in some dried fruit and sprinkled them with crumble topping. Delicious, they said that night, scraping the bowls so clean they hardly needed to go in the dishwasher. The fools.”

“And for a split second Cleo saw the value in living openly. Liberation was Windex for the soul. It let the light shine through. But why dwell? Nothing was ever going to change.”

“Because whipping an atlas at Jackson's head while he was flirt-touching that Frankie girl in geography would have been very satisfying. And beating him with the Eiffel Tower snowglobe while he kissed Cleo in French would have been tres cathartic. But she hadn't. Instead she'd been egg-like: a hard shell on the outside, and a runny mess on the inside.”