Deb Caletti Quotes

I wondered if parents had an easier time with the secrets their children kept than children did with the secrets of their parents. A parent's secrets seemed like some sort of betrayal, where my own just seemed like a fact of life and growing up and away. I was supposed to be independent, but he was supposed to be available. Him having his own life seemed selfish, where me having my own was the right order of things.

It took me years to figure out that upset was upset, and tumultuousness was not the same thing as passion. Love isn't drama.

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.

People are secretive when they have secrets.

When you're not sure whether you're in love with someone or not, the answer is not.

But my apology was a thousand apologies.

Here is something that Peach, one of the Casserole Queens, says about men and women and love. You know that scene in Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo is standing on the ground looking longingly at Juliet on the balcony above him? One of the most romantic moments in all of literary history? Peach says there's no way that Romeo was standing down there to profess his undying devotion. The truth, Peach says, is that Romeo was just trying to look up Juliet's skirt.

Just because it turned out bad, doesn’t mean it wasn’t meant.

All of my books come from something that I happen to be working out at a given point in my life. Its kind of self-therapy.

Because that’s how it works after something terrible has happened. You know this is true if something terrible has ever happened to you. A thousand objects take on new meaning. Everything is a reminder of something else.

Maybe we all just want to feel special, even for a little while, to be fooled for a bit into feeling something besides the truth of our own ordinariness.

Maybe some people just had trouble with forever.

They never told you that stranger might be someone you knew.

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

And pity--people who inspire it in you are actually very powerful people. To get someone else to take care of you, to feel sorry for you--that takes a lot of strength, smarts, manipulation. Very powerful people.

What’s that about? Love must be more about power than we think, if even in its most intimate moment of expression we think about not being the one who risks the most.

The magic of purpose and of love in its purest form. Not televison love, with its glare and hollow and sequined glint; not sex and allure, all high shoes and high drama, everything both too small and in too much excess, but just love. Love like rain, like the smell of a tangerine, like a surprise found in your pocket.

It’s a simple truth that a secret is something you’re ashamed of.

If you look up "charming" in the dictionary, you'll see that it not only has references to strong attraction, but to spells and magic. Then again, what are liars if not great magicians?

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.

Fear was the biggest bullshitter, he’d said. But sometimes, too, fear told the truth.

The most insane things can become normal if you have them around you long enough. A mind can’t seem to hold anything too crazy for too long without finding a way to make it seem normal.

Maybe I was being too picky. Maybe I didn't want to be close to anyone. Maybe I'd just be the type who couldn't feel love all the way or something. I couldn't tell what was wrong, but what was wrong was that it just wasn't right.

It was possible, maybe, to have facts in your mind that weren't facts at all. You could build a whole life's story on false assumptions. You could make truths out of untruths and untruths out of truths. Until you spoke them, really said them out loud or checked for sure, you may not have known which were which.

If fate is a shape-shifter, then loves is too. It can be, anyway, in its most dangerous form. It´s your best day and then your worst. It´s your most hope and then you most despair. Lightness, darkness, it can swing between extremes at lightning speed- a boat upon the water on the most dangerous day, and then the clouds crawl in and the sky turns black and the sea rages and the boat is lost.

Here, kitty, kitty, Chico says. The cover of his cage is still on, making his tiny clown voice slightly muffled. I feel bad for him under there, just waiting to start his evil little day...Freud walks toward Chico in his slinky fashion, sits under his cage and just stares. We have satanic pets...our pets seem to have made a pact with the devil.

A relationship could be a place to hide too.

I know parental embarrassment usually stops somewhere at fifteen, but he just kept on giving me good reasons.

I became a writer because I love books, and I believe in their power.

Sometimes that´s all you need…, to know it´s not broken. To know you’re still whole and that you’ll heal.

It's strange, isn't it, how the idea of belonging to someone can sound so great? It can be comforting, the way it makes things decided. We like the thought of being held, until it's too tight. We like that certainty, until it means there's no way out. And we like being his, until we realize we're not ours anymore.

Things that came apart could be put together again, but never exactly the same.

Sometimes I’ve even wished there was a human pause button, where you could choose some point in your life where you could stay always.

The favorite game of temperamental people is Try to Guess Why I’m Ticked Off. (Contestant number one, Why do YOU think he’s pissed off? Why, I’m not sure, Bob, but I’m going to go with ‘Because I Left the Faucet Dripping.’ BEEP. I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. The correct answer is: ‘Because You Happen to Exist.’)

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?

I tended to give a book a chance and another chance and another, sometimes seeing it all the way to the end, still hoping for for it turn out different. Maybe I was confused about what you owed a book. What you owed people, for that matter, real or fictional.

And if you could make a choice, then why not pick happiness?

...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.

The romantic element is what the story Essential Maps for the Lost, sort of sits on, but all the stuff below the surface is really about family. It's about the baggage we bring, both the good and the hard stuff in that baggage. It's more about the other relationships. It's about mothers and fathers and sisters and dogs, all of the pieces. It's really more about - yes, love, in its widest usage.

The hurt affects your ability to go forward.

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

All of us create our own versions of an event, of our lives, even, not because were liars, necessarily, but because we can only see and understand the truth from our own viewpoint, and a shifting viewpoint at that.

I vow... "to not let the back & forth of forgiveness interrupt the steadiness of love.

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

Most of our parents wanted the best for us, I knew, but we also wanted the best for them.

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.

Accents are funny in that they have this odd draw for us, yet we forget we have one, too. No one is without an accent, but the one you’ve got seems like oatmeal to their caviar.

The scariest part of forever is that nothing is.