Even though she was bigger than most girls - big hips, big chest, wide shoulders - she carried herself like she was the size everyone else wanted to be.
One of the characteristics of Reagan that Cath finds intimidating is her confidence, as she automatically feels at ease in every situation and has absolute body confidence to boot. This confidence is very attractive to the opposite sex which is why she has a number of boyfriends. Reagan's larger size mirrors her larger than life presence as she is noisy and heavy handed but her confidence in herself makes her the polar opposite of Cath who finds every social situation terrifying.
I'm her sister. I'm supposed to look out for her.
"Not against her will".
When Cath and Levi find that Wren is drink in Muggsy's Bar with her equally-drunk room-mate in to, and that the male customers at the bar are acting obnoxiously, Cath wants to take Wren home, but Wren refuses to leave with her. This quote sums up the new relationship that the twins have in college, with Wren trying to pull away and act independently, and Cath, the one in the family who is always taking care of everyone, wanting to assert their normal roles onto Wren.
Their mom left on September 11th. THE September 11th. Cath still found this incredibly embarrassing, like their mom was so self-centered she couldn't be trusted not to desecrate a national tragedy with her own issues.
The twins' mother has been absent from their life for ten years but her influence on the course of their lives has been enormous because of that absence. Cath feels that she is so self-absorbed that what occurs in the world is of no importance to her unless it relates to her own happiness. The issue of their mother deciding that she wants to reach out to the girls is one that proves decisive and is another example of their mother's ability to turn their lives upside down because of something she wants at the time.
This is why I can't be with Levi. Because I'm the kind of girl who fantasizes about being trapped in a library overnight, and Levi can't even read.
Cath has a tendency to see things in exaggerated forms and this observation is an example of that; her love of the library extends further than a simple love of books; at night the library would be empty except for her and being alone is a much more reassuring place for Cath, as she could work on her fan fiction and spend time with the characters in her story, who are the only people she is consistently comfortable with. Levi finds it difficult to focus on reading and seems to suffer from undiagnosed dyslexia, loving to hear Cath read to him and always studying literature assignments from audiobooks. This actually draws them together more than it separates them and ultimately leads to their first romantic encounter.
You can have a relationship with the parent who abandoned us and I'll stay here to take care of the one who picked up the pieces.
Cath views Wren's willingness to connect with their mother as a terrible disloyalty and also as a contributing factor to their fathers mental unraveling. She is frustrated that Wren's openness is diluting her steadfast refusal to talk to her mother. She is somewhat correct in this viewpoint as Wren does not come home for family Thanksgiving because she stays at her mothers house, thereby changing their traditional annual celebration, another sign of her disloyalty in Cath's eyes.
