Deb Caletti Quotes

She'd be one of those parents who left a kid behind at a rest stop, driving for miles before she noticed. We'd hear about her on the evening news.

This is not just a simple story of "money can't buy happiness." Or maybe that's just what it is. And if it is, why shouldn't it be? Because if this is something we are already supposed to know, then why don't we know it? Why do we chase and scrabble and fight for things to flaunt, why? Why do we reach for power over other people, and through the thin superiority of our possessions, believe we have it? Why do we let money make people bigger, and allow those without it to be made smaller? How did we lose the truth in the frantic, tribal drumbeat of more, more, more?

The six rules of maybe 1. respect the power of hope and possibilites. Begin with beleif. Hold onto it. 2. If you known where you want to go, you're already half way there. Know what you desire but, more imporantly, why you desire it. Then go. 3. hopes and dreams and heart's desires require a clear path-get out of your own way 4. Place hope carefully in your own hands and in the hands of others 5. Persist, if necessary 6. That said, most importantly-know when you've reached an end, Quit, give up, do it with courage. Giving up is not failing-it's the chance to begin again.

So I put up with bad behavior in the name of loving the way I thought you were supposed to love.

We are all a volume on a shelf of a library, a story unto ourselves, never possibly described with one word or even very accurately with thousands. A person is never as quiet or unrestrained as they seem, or as bad or good, as vulnerable or as strong, as sweet or as fiesty; we are thickly layered, page upon lying page, behind simple covers. And love - it is not the book itself, but the binding. It can rip us apart or hold us together.

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.

We're as good at talking ourselves out of fear as into it, aren't we? Maybe better.

It's shocking the things we call love.

Love seems to be something to approach with caution, as if you'd come across a wrapped box in the middle of the street and have no idea what it contains.

...forever is hard enough without it beginning now.

...we are all a volume on the shelf of the... library, a story unto ourselves, never possibly described with one word or even very accurately with thousands.

A lady I will be, but a man's accessory, his handbag, no thank you. I will not be someone's ornament. I will not just be someone's honey, baby, sweetheart.

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.

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.

I don't get why prom is like a mini-wedding these days...No one should spend that kind of money for a high school dance.

We should not give away a moment to anyone who does not deserve it.

Being needed was a handy trick. It could fill you up so full you never even noticed all the places that were empty.

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.

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.

You were supposed to have hope, right? You were supposed to respect its power and hold on. And so I did. I held, and held, and let hope fill me. But as the days went on, it seemed I could be holding for a long, long time. Hope could be the most powerful thing or the most useless

Unconditional love is like a contry of two with no laws and no government. Which is all fine if everyone is peaceful and law abiding. In the wrong hands, though, you got looting and crime sprees, and let me tell you, the people who demand unconditional love are usually the ones who will rob and pillage and then blame you because you left your door unlocked.

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.

...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.

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.

A person who says "it's your decision" is informing you that your decision sucks.

Once an asshole, always an asshole.

Blessed books—they’re a place to be alone, and no one else can come in.

Supposedly there's an actual, researched link between extreme creativity and mental illness, and I believe it because I've seen it with my own eyes.

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.

Bliss is the ocean, a towel on the sand, the sun out, the chance to swim in waves or walk dragging a stick behind you, a good book, a cold drink.

Most people, it seems like they've only got one part of the equation down. Caring for themselves, or caring for someone else. And I'v learned how important it is to have both.

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.

... But then again, a person could turn ugly. Their actual look could change when their actions were repulsive.

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

But what I wanted back had never really been there. He was a temporary illusion, a mirage of water after walking in the desert. I had made him up. And he could have killed me. You've got to stop the ride sometimes. Stop it and get off.

But then there are the van Goghs and Hemingways and Mozarts, those who feel a hunger so deep, so far down, that greatness lies there too, nestled somewhere within it. Those who get their inner voice and direction from the cool mysterious insides of the moon, and not from the earth like the rest of us.

Are you getting your period?" She narrows her eyes. No! God. I hate that. I hate when every negative act is blamed on your period." Sometimes bitchiness is just bitchiness, happily unattached to anything hormonal. It should get full credit.

Sometimes you can cattle rope your heart and sometimes you can't, is all.

It was a shut door, and shut doors meant things kept to yourself. There were reasons you kept things to yourself, and they usually weren’t good, happy, open-air sort of reasons. Still, I didn’t want to see behind that door. You think you want to know everything there is to know about everything there is to know. But you don’t. Not really. I had pried the lid off of the dark places of another person before, I had seen inside. Down deep. You don’t want to look at what’s rotting there.

Anyway, madness and genius. They're the disturbed pals of the human condition. The Bonnie and Clyde, the Thelma and Louise, the baking soda and vinegar. Insanity just walks alongside the brilliant like some creepy, insistent shadow.

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.

We had lain together, skin on skin, been as close as two people could, and he was a stranger. He was that someone who you are afraid of as a child, stranger. They never told you that stranger might be someone you knew.

Beaches, music, and car rides—they could all bring on a sudden bout of deep, dreamy thoughts.

No, Mom. I said fine." "It's just your tone." Ah, yes- the tone. The nasty traitor.

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.

I love to see those paragliders weaving softly around Moon Point, their legs floating above you in the air. When they drift in for a landing, their feet touch the ground and they trot forward from the continued motion of the glider, which billows down like a setting sun. I never get tired of watching them and I've seen them thousands of times. I always wondered what that kind of freedom would feel like.

Stereotypes are fast and easy, but they are lies, and the truth takes its time.

I don’t know why we insist on pain when pain is so often easy to eliminate. It’s funny the ways we try to punish ourselves when we feel we’ve committed some crime.