Deb Caletti Quotes

They say religion is about love, but you wonder how much of it really is about fear. ~ Deb Caletti

I'm thinking we ought to rethink the whole self-esteem thing. It should almost be a dirty word. I mean, look at Kayla. She has the intelligence of a tree stump, and its sense of humour. She's less about real attractiveness than she is about advertising ... She's the kind of girl who shows how hot she is because she has nothing else to offer, who doesn't realise that hotness has an expiration date. Yet, I'm still a little nervous talking to her like she's holding a lottery ticket she just might or might not decide to hand over to me. It is nuts, if you stop to think about it. I give give her this power, and it's kind of like voting some idiot into office. But hey, we're good at that, too. ~ Deb Caletti

At the root of every large struggle in life is the need to be honest about something that we do not feel we can be honest about. We lie to ourselves or other people because the truth might require action on our part, and action requires courage. We say we "don't know" what is wrong, when we do know what is wrong; we just wish we didn't.
Art lets us tell the truth, but even art can be something to hide behind. ~ Deb Caletti

If reading counted as a sport, I'd be a gold medalist. ~ Deb Caletti

I'd always thought telling the truth to other people was hard, but maybe that was a snap compared to telling the truth to yourself. Sometimes we just refused to know what we knew. ~ Deb Caletti

We put God in front of terrifying things, and we knocked three times, and we took drugs and shopped too much and obsessed about success, so that the scary stuff would look farther away than it was. We worried, because maybe if we worried enough, it would act like a spell of safety. All those things, superstitions and addictions and anxiety, they were all about hiding from what scared the shit out of us. ~ Deb Caletti

The way two people can end up in the same place, find each other in a crowd, and change their lives and the lives of the people around them forever ... It makes you believe in fate. And fate gives love some authority. Like it's been stamped with approval from above, if you believe in above. A godly green light. Some destined significance. ~ Deb Caletti

You've got to have someone who loves your body. Who doesn't define you, but sees you. Who loves what he sees. Who you don't have to struggle to be good enough for. ~ Deb Caletti

He's not coming back. Maybe I do know this after all. Goodbye. I say to him in my head. I say it tenderly. I try to tell him with that one word how sorry I am. ~ Deb Caletti

Sometimes you build up these walls, you build and you build and you build up these walls and you think they're so strong, but then someone can come along and tip them over with only his fingers, or the weight of his breath. ~ Deb Caletti

Wanting things for the wrong reasons can turn anyone's life into a marshmallow on a stick over a hot fire: impossibly messy and eventually consumed, one way or another. ~ Deb Caletti

This is the problem with danger, isn't it? You can even be warned and ignore the warning. Danger can seem far away until the sky grows dark, and a bolt of fury heads straight toward you. ~ Deb Caletti

The hope was, people like me got to finally find our place in college or in the actual world. People who understood this told you that high school wasn't the actual world, that it was more like a temporary alternate reality you were forced to believe in for four years. A video game you played, where you could never get to the next level no matter how hard you tried. ~ Deb Caletti

Sometimes you think you've found love, when it's really just one of those objects that are shiny in a certain light
a trophy, say, or a ring, or a diamond, even. Glass shards, maybe. You've got to be careful, you do. The shine can blind you. The edges can cut you in way you never imagined. It is up to you to allow that or not. ~ Deb Caletti

But my apology was a thousand apologies. ~ Deb Caletti

I thought I might cry, the way you do when someone gives you some kindness when you most need it but when it seems the most surprising thing. ~ Deb Caletti

It was more work than it seemed, looking through a telescope, as the Earth was continually moving and you had to move along with it. You don't realize how fast this acutally happens, and it's kind of both creepy and wonderful when you stop to think about it. And it makes you realize there's absolutely no way to avoid change. You can sit there and cross your arms and refuse it, but underneath you, things are still spinning away. ~ Deb Caletti

There was something about her mouth that made me feel possibilities ... the way a train ticket holds possibilities, the way a boat docked at sunset does, the way a voice on the radio announcing victory does. A mouth can have that it can seem brave, and bold. Finite and infinite. After a war, you need both of those things. "Why don't you kiss me, she said. "Celebrate a new world." And so I did. I could not forget that kiss. I still cannot. I put my fingertips to her face. Indeed,changed that day, but the change in life was no smaller or less significant. The moment took my sorrow and made it swarm the streets in victory, shouting in joy and rightness, and from that I have never quite recovered. ~ Deb Caletti

Maybe we ought to look at a guy's response to our microwave from now on." Aunt Annie said.
Really." Mom said. "The narcissist looks at his reflection in it. The OCD guy thinks you don't keep it clean enough.The antisocial
"
Puts his fist through it because it reminds him of his father." Annie said. She'd read all of mom's books, too.
And the paranoid one would be jealous of the amount of time you spend cooking." Mom said
Were you using that microwave again? Is something going on between the two of you? I caught you looking right at its clock." Annie said. ~ Deb Caletti

I thought about him everyday until then. I started having these conversations with him in my head that you have when you meet someone you sense is going to be important in your life. ~ Deb Caletti

Nice is akin to not walking under ladders or stepping on cracks. It's a superstitious hedging of bets. A part of you thinks your good behavior will ward off evil. Well, apparently that's not true. ~ Deb Caletti

Us frogs understand this. ~ Deb Caletti

Who's crazier, anyway: people who struggle honestly, or the people who act like they never do? ~ Deb Caletti

If you think about becoming a writer, that's just really one of the big dreams I had. It's really important to have those dreams and pursue your passions. ~ Deb Caletti

Secrets have a shelf life. ~ Deb Caletti

You ... You had always made the future feel safe. As long as you were in it too, beside me, I could be okay. ~ Deb Caletti

Yeah. When you want what's real and you try to find that in high school, you might as well be looking for a mossy rock beside a babbling brook on the corner of Sixth and Pine in downtown Seattle. ~ Deb Caletti

Fear causes the greatest changes, when you think about it. Fear is a monumental force. ~ Deb Caletti

Usually, I set one foot in a library and I feel my own internal volume lower. A library is a physical equivalent of a sigh. It's the silence, sure, but it's also the certainty of all those books, the way they stand side by side with their still, calm conviction. It's the reassurance of knowledge in the face of confusion. ~ Deb Caletti

Quitting-it was a dirty word in a place where pilgrims had endured harsh winters and where pioneers had struggled through death and disease to create new lives. Giving up or stepping back or setting aside something you thought you wanted- it was almost a shameful act. ~ Deb Caletti

I didn't know what I wanted to Be ... A sense that I had permanently botched things already, embarked on the trip without the map. and it scared me too, that I might end up as a mother of 3 working in a psychiatrist's office, or renting surfboards ... I guess I saw their lives as failed somehow, absent of the Big Win ... What is fate was an inherited trait? What if luck came through the genetic line, and the ability to "succeed" at your chosen "direction" was handed down, just like the family china? Maybe I was destined to be a weed too. ~ Deb Caletti

My father said that love at first sight should send you running, if you know what's good for you. It's your dark pieces having instant recognition with their dark pieces, he says. You're an idiot if you think it means you've met your soul mate. So I was an idiot. ~ Deb Caletti

There's a Reasonable Explanation' is definitely a place you can go, a destination. ~ Deb Caletti

Marriage is like a well-built porch. If one of the two posts leans too much, the porch collapses. So each must be strong enough to stand on its own. ~ Deb Caletti

Six? Here? he says.
Six, here. Seven, eight, nine, anywhere. ~ Deb Caletti

Often, marriage was solitude, with company. ~ Deb Caletti

We look down our noses at people who've made mistakes in relationships. She's so stupid! How could she do that! Our superiority makes us feel better. But I'd bet everything I have on the fact that people to claim to have a perfect record in love are either lying or have very limited dating experience. People who say, I'd never do that! Someday, unless you are very, very lucky, you'll have a story to tell. Or not to tell. ~ Deb Caletti

The people who ask for advice are the ones who already know what they should do. ~ Deb Caletti

Sometimes love is a surprise, an instant of recognition, a sudden gift at a sudden moment that makes everything different from then on. Some people will say that's not love, that you can't really love someone you don't know. But, I'm not so sure. Love doesn't seem to follow a plan; it's not a series of steps. It can hit with the force of nature
an earthquake, a tidal wave, a storm of wild relentless energy that is beyond your simple attempts at control. ~ Deb Caletti

Rejection, though
it could make the loss of someone you weren't even that crazy about feel gut wrenching and world ending. ~ Deb Caletti

The most true-love words are not the ones that grasp and hold and bind you, twisting you both up together in some black dance. No, they are ones that leave you free to stand alone on your own solid ground, leave him to do the same, a tender space between you. ~ Deb Caletti

A dog - a dog teaches us so much about love. Wordless, imperfect love; love that is constant, love that is simple
goodness, love that forgives not only bad singing and embarrassments, but misunderstandings and harsh words.
Love that sits and stays and stays and stays, until it finally becomes its own forever. Love, stronger than death. A dog is a four-legged reminder that love comes and time passes and then your heart breaks. ~ Deb Caletti

It made me wonder how many times we forgive just because we don't want to lose someone, even if they don't deserve our forgiveness. ~ Deb Caletti

Look right at it. Know you can." Dad said. "Look right at that fear. Fear is the biggest bullshitter. ~ Deb Caletti

[He] made me feel ... large, maybe. In a way I hadn't before. But he didn't know that. For all he knew, I was always that large. It felt good. Fun. Unexpectedly large is sudden, magic levitation - you're high, an impervious Balloon of Joy. ~ Deb Caletti

Cars are all jammed up all along the road and a light turns red and someone honks. In every one of those cars there is a story or a hundred stories. For every light on in al of those huge city buildings there is a story. No one knows what I am about to face and no one knows my story and neither do I right then. ~ Deb Caletti

She does not read it the way she and Kat used to read books - devouring them with the speed of two people famished for words, ideas, and beautiful sentences that make you feel everything. No, she reads Endurance the way a person might read the Bible - in small passages, repeated again and again, to help her stay grounded. To help her persevere, and understand her place in the world.
She has missed books, but she's been afraid of them, same as music. Books make you feel things hard. They hit the tender spots. Books remind her of her and Kat, but also of her old self, too, the mostly carefree self. The girl who was just so happy to come home from the library with a big stack of new stuff to read. Books were dangerous. ~ Deb Caletti

Knowledge was a personal life preserver you could always count on when you were swimming in the deep end ~ Deb Caletti

It was about the way a moment, a single moment, could change things and make you decide to try to be someone different. ~ Deb Caletti

A drop of poison on that gathering snow. That moment in the fairy tale when we know what just happened but the princess doesn't. ~ Deb Caletti

I could forget that part, but it had to have been true. ~ Deb Caletti

My subconscious speaks in a foreign language. ~ Deb Caletti

[A]pparently, it's okay to WORK as a waitress but not to BE a waitress. ~ Deb Caletti

Maybe she could quit her big job of being responsible for everyone else's feelings...She imagines it - letting go. Handing the heavy stuff back to the people it belongs to. ~ Deb Caletti

We forget that just because something is honest it is not necessary the truth. ~ Deb Caletti

It was one of those times you feel a sense of loss, even though you didn't have something in the first place. I guess that's what disappointment is- a sense of loss for something you never had. ~ Deb Caletti

I don't stop to imagine home and the people in it, because this is so far from home, I am another person entirely. ~ Deb Caletti

You get to thinking that maybe the diving line shouldn't be animals and people but good and bad. ~ Deb Caletti

You can want one thing and have a secret wish for its opposite. ~ Deb Caletti

Holy Christ fate's got a fucking sick sense of humor " he chuckled. ~ Deb Caletti

Once again, I am translucent. I could break against rocks. I am ten thousand miles down and ten thousand miles across and around and it's too far and too long and too deep, but there is no black-haired body with wide, soft brown eyes looking into mine and seeing exactly who I am. ~ Deb Caletti

An untold story has a weight that can submerge you, sure as a sunken ship at the bottom of the ocean. ~ Deb Caletti

If your life truths have to be protected like some people keep their couches in plastic then ciao. have a nice life. if we bump into eachoter at Target, i'm the one buying the sour gummy worms and thats all you need to know about me. ~ Deb Caletti

A person could leave you so quickly. So much history and time and memories, but they snuck away from you, and other things took their place. How could you hold on? Wait. A bigger question. The biggest. How could you hold on and
let go? ~ Deb Caletti

It's good to let God pick a man for you. We don't do so well when we pick them ourselves. They end up lipsticks in a drawer, all those wrong colors you thought looked so good in the package. ~ Deb Caletti

But the one thing my illness did make me realize is how necessary it is to ignore the dangers of living in order to live. And how much trouble you can get into if you can't. We all have to get up every morning and go outside and pretend we aren't going to die ... We concentrate on having little thoughts so we don't have BIG THOUGHTS. It's like those days when you've got a really bad pimple but you still have to go to school. You've got to convince yourself it's not so bad just so you can leave the house and actually talk to people face to face. You've got to ignore the one big truth
life is fatal. ~ Deb Caletti

I guess after all those years he had exhausted me. I never knew I was signing up for a battle, but I finally knew that he had won. ~ Deb Caletti

I would eat fruitcake if there'd been a nuclear war and I'd run out of canned goods. ~ Deb Caletti

You can forget that other people carry pieces of your own story around in their heads. I've always thought
put together all those random pieces form everyone who's ever known you from your parents to the guy who once sat next to you on a bus, and you'd probably see a fuller version of your life than you even did while living it. ~ Deb Caletti

I didn't walk over and talk to him, though, not then. If I needed the time for a tree branch to become just a tree branch again and the wind to become just the wind, then a boy, most of all, needed some time to be only a boy. ~ Deb Caletti

When you go looking for rescue, you end up trapped in your own weakness. ~ Deb Caletti

What is it about hairdressers? You tell them 'not too short' and some part of their hairdresser brain hears this as 'whack the shit out of it.' If you never say, 'not too short,' everything is fine. You say it, & it's a guarantee you'll come out ready for the military> ~ Deb Caletti

Sometimes you've got to make a mess before you clean it up. ~ Deb Caletti

Truth was funny, because it was an insistent thing, maybe as powerful and insistent as some force of nature, the push of water or wind. You could keep it out only so long, but it had its own will and its own needs, and maybe you could keep it at bay with lies, but not for long, not for always. ~ Deb Caletti

Love is corny, when you get right down to it. It has two left feet. It trips over itself, because it is so large that it's awkward. It's sort of silly, done right. After all, how do you convey something that huge? ~ Deb Caletti

People are secretive when they have secrets. ~ Deb Caletti

Niceness is expected of her, not honesty. ~ Deb Caletti

It's both harder and easier without words. ~ Deb Caletti

He's good, all right," Mom said. "But I guess there's something else. About being sure. Sure about anything. Right comes with right timing. ~ Deb Caletti

I kept trying to talk myself out of my second thoughts when they were trying to help me. My advice? When it comes to relationships, second thoughts should be promoted. ~ Deb Caletti

She once led this secret uprising to switch the voice boxes of Barbies and G.I. Joes. When they hit the shelves, G.I. Joe said, 'Let's go shopping!' and Barbie said, 'The enemy must be overtaken.'
I laugh. "No way."
"Yes way. Sex-role stereotyping in children's toys, all that. ~ Deb Caletti

You've got an in-love feeling, but the relationship is damaging. When do you stop calling it love? ~ Deb Caletti

It's a beautiful word. If is a key to any locked door. ~ Deb Caletti

That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable. ~ Deb Caletti

We are thickly layered, page lying upon page, behind simple covers. And love - it is not the book itself, but the binding. ~ Deb Caletti

Summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. for those few months, you're not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage you don't have the rest of the year. you can be grateful and easy, with no eyes on you, and no past. summer just opens the door and lets you out. ~ Deb Caletti

A person shows signs of clutching on too fast, of being needy, of not hearing the word "no," of jealousy, of guarding you and your freedom. But the signs can be so small they skitter right past you. Sometimes they dance past, looking satiny, something you should applaud. Someone's jealousy can make you feel good. Special. But it's not even about you. It's about a hand that is already gripping. It's about their need, circling around your throat ~ Deb Caletti

I used to know a woman named Anita Hurl," Lizbeth said. "Get it? I need to hurl? ~ Deb Caletti

When your arms are out wide, you'll capture love and joy and golden moments but other things, too. Mistrust will sneak in on a wave of that joy, and complications will ride the backs of the golden moments, and there will be both love and the risks of love. That's the way it is. That's the design. ~ Deb Caletti

Nice isn't the same as good," he said. "People are 'nice' for a million of reasons. 'Nice' is the outside. What people get to see. What you want people to see. 'Good' is the inside. And this is a bad person, C. He's making you a fucking prisoner and your letting him ~ Deb Caletti

I was like a chocolate in a box, looking well behaved and perfect in place, all the while harboring a secret center. ~ Deb Caletti

Sometimes you're sure dogs have some secret, superior intelligence, and other times you know they're only their simple, goofy selves. ~ Deb Caletti

This was what happened after you'd been together with someone a long time. You loved that it was old and worn and comfy, but sometimes it was old and worn and comfy. ~ Deb Caletti

But, finally, I had to open my eyes. I had to stop keeping secrets. The truth, thankfully, is insistent. What I saw then made action necessary. I had to see people for who they were. I had to understand why I made the choices I did. Why I had given them my loyalty. I had to make changed. I had to stop allowing love to be dangerous. I had to learn how to protect myself. But first ... I had to look ~ Deb Caletti

Darkness does this. It finds all the places you are hiding in. It finds all the things you are holding onto tightly and makes you let go. ~ Deb Caletti

Once, I had to drive Oliver to soccer, was ten minutes late, and learned that there had apparently been a misprint in the Bible on the Ten Commandments thing: Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not be late to soccer. My father was so pissed, I practically had to get the lightning bolt surgically removed from my back. ~ Deb Caletti

Love was also an easy word, used carelessly. Felons and creeps could offer it coated in sugar, and users could dangle it so enticingly that you wouldn't notice that it had things attached - heavy things, things like pity and need, that were weighty as anchors and iron beams and just as impossible to get out from underneath. ~ Deb Caletti

Those questions you have? Whether he's the one, whether you feel about him the way you should, or whether the relationship is going okay? When you're not sure whether you're in love with someone or not, the answer is not. ~ Deb Caletti

Music and books stir up emotions. They make feelings rise and clatter and wreck, and sometimes that's dangerous. But music can make you rise up and clatter and destroy when you need to, too. ~ Deb Caletti

What is more like love than the ocean? You can play in it, drown in it ... it can be clear and bright enough to hurt your eyes, or covered in fog, hidden behind a curve of roads and then suddenly there in full glory. It's waves come like breaths, in and out, body stretched to forever in it's possibilities, and yet it's heart lies deep, not fully knowable, inconceivably majestic. ~ Deb Caletti