Top 100 Deb Caletti Quotes
#1. We try to hold a storm in our own fist but we are not that strong.
Deb Caletti
#2. Maybe it was wrong, or maybe impossible, but I wanted the truth to be one thing. One solid thing.
Deb Caletti
#3. Against the sky, she is exquisitely elsewhere.
Deb Caletti
#4. You've got to say what you mean and mean what you say ... Doubt in your voice is an open door people will shove right through.
Deb Caletti
#5. I shouldn't have to be a liar to make someone love me. I shouldn't be so afraid of losing someone that I'll do anything to make them stay.
Deb Caletti
#6. Holy Christ fate's got a fucking sick sense of humor " he chuckled.
Deb Caletti
#7. Control was just wishful thinking, and you controlled things to hedge your bets, to be safe, to guard against loss.
Deb Caletti
#8. 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
#9. 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.
Deb Caletti
#10. But, dear God, don't listen to me. I'm an old lady in the middle of nowhere without a real toilet.
Deb Caletti
#11. People like to have something to turn down, though. They want to be able to say no to some things, because it makes their yes more meaningful. (pg. 25)
Deb Caletti
#12. I liked the idea of bouncy, open-air Jeeps and I liked the outfits with all the pockets, only I didn't really want to live in Africa and be shot by poachers/get malaria/get stabbed to death.
Deb Caletti
#13. There's grief and then there's the loneliness of grief. The way it's just yours and yours alone.
Deb Caletti
#14. When what you want is a relationship, and not a person, get a dog.
Deb Caletti
#15. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Oh, you can pile on as many as you want, but the guilt is still there, like that pea under all those mattresses.
Deb Caletti
#16. Maybe we all just wanted someone to believe in. That's all each of us wanted, and it should be so simple, but it never was simple.
Deb Caletti
#17. The truest thing about truth was that it needed to be seen no matter what it was and no matter how it came to you.
Deb Caletti
#18. 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
#19. More than anything, I like just being there while he works, doing what he knows to do, in his own place.
Deb Caletti
#20. It is one of those moments where there is so much to say that there is nothing to say, no adequate words, anyway, to speak it all.
Deb Caletti
#21. I became a writer because I love books, and I believe in their power.
Deb Caletti
#22. 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
#23. You're an asshole alive, you're still an asshole dead.
Deb Caletti
#24. He's alright. He's fine, Dad says, his usual line whenever Oliver gets hurt. It means: Go away. Don't baby him. Don't show too much compassion. The other dads do this too. It's some kind of group hysteria, based on some fatherly fear that says compassion equals homosexuality.
Deb Caletti
#25. It was the feeling of not belonging, and longing for your familiar couch and your familiar TV with all those comforting TV people who couldn't see you.
Deb Caletti
#26. I was like a chocolate in a box, looking well behaved and perfect in place, all the while harboring a secret center.
Deb Caletti
#27. It's a twisted version of Green Eggs and Ham: I could panic in a train! I could panic on a plane! I could panic on the stairs - I could panic anywhere!
Deb Caletti
#28. The night smelled like blackberry leaves and the ocean's nearness, something sweet and deep and full.
Deb Caletti
#29. We're as good at talking ourselves out of fear as into it, aren't we? Maybe better.
Deb Caletti
#30. Does the river make the choice to erode the rock?
Deb Caletti
#31. Sometimes you can cattle rope your heart and sometimes you can't, is all.
Deb Caletti
#32. It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj Mahal.
Deb Caletti
#33. My most memorable teacher was Rich Campe, my third-grade teacher at Fairlands Elementary in Pleasanton, California.
Deb Caletti
#34. 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
#35. Cool superiority as a mask for overflowing insecurity.
Deb Caletti
#36. You never know how - or when - the idea for a book will appear.
Deb Caletti
#37. And because he was nice in the beginning did not mean he was a good man.
Deb Caletti
#38. You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. I don't why stories worked that way, but they did.
Deb Caletti
#39. I was a book lover from the beginning. I loved, love, words and images and ideas, the ways a book can make you feel things deeply or help you understand something you never even knew there were words for.
Deb Caletti
#40. 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
#42. Dad was a writer down to his cells, and he loved metaphors. Everything was a metaphor. Your dirty laundry could be one. Unexpected encounters with dog shit, definitely.
Deb Caletti
#43. I wrote one book, signed with a good agent, and sat back and waited for the phone to ring. I was sure that the great news would come at any moment. Four books later, I finally got that call.
Deb Caletti
#44. You did that when you started to care a lot
you worried he was watching your every move to make sure he really wanted you. You could forget that maybe you were supposed to be doing that too. You forgot it wasn't just you being watched and judged and trying to pass some test.
Deb Caletti
#45. When you raise an animal, you live it like your own child.
Deb Caletti
#46. The first rule of marital success: Don't marry crazy and don't be crazy.
Deb Caletti
#47. They never told you that stranger might be someone you knew.
Deb Caletti
#48. I hunt around in my purse. There are no more caramels or fuzzy Altoids, but I find what might be a cough drop. I hold it out to Henry, and he gives me a scared look, like I've just pulled out a knife.
Deb Caletti
#49. We can get so wrapped up in our own misconceptions that we miss the simple beauty of the truth.
Deb Caletti
#50. 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
#51. I would have spoken, had my heart not been in my throat
Deb Caletti
#52. It makes you realize how basically everything we do comes down to a) mating or b) competing for resources. It's just like Animal Planet, only we've got Cover Girl and Victoria's Secret instead of colored feathers and fancy markings, and the violence occurs at the Nordstrom's Half-Yearly Sale.
Deb Caletti
#53. It doesn't matter if we're young. If you love someone, and it's right ... We can make it the whole way, Crick.
Deb Caletti
#54. 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.
Deb Caletti
#55. You wanted more from people sometimes. And sometimes,you wanted more from yourself.
Deb Caletti
#56. Blessed books - they're a place to be alone, and no one else can come in.
Deb Caletti
#57. 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?
Deb Caletti
#58. If you don't participate, you're just taking up oxygen. (Bunny)
Life is a banquet. Approach it with hunger. (Chuck)
Deb Caletti
#59. In a lifetime, the recipe always needs amending - more of this, a little less of that, what to do now that the cake has fallen.
Deb Caletti
#60. 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
#61. Most of our parents wanted the best for us, I knew, but we also wanted the best for them.
Deb Caletti
#62. A library is a physical equivalent of a sigh.
Deb Caletti
#64. Writers are troubled about finding time to write and writer's block and publicizing books that aren't books yet. They agonize over how to write and what to write and what not to write.
Deb Caletti
#65. It's funny the ways we try to punish ourselves when we feel we've committed some crime.
Deb Caletti
#66. We made plans. I lay in bed for a long time just feeling delicious anticipation. Then excitement hit. I got up. I had to move a mountain or something.
Deb Caletti
#67. It occurred to me then that a lot of life was either about wanting and not having, or having and not wanting.
Deb Caletti
#68. Good can sit in the distance, just beyond your view, waiting, until you go toward it.
Deb Caletti
#69. Fear was the biggest bullshitter, he'd said. But sometimes, too, fear told the truth.
Deb Caletti
#70. 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.
Deb Caletti
#71. There's a Reasonable Explanation' is definitely a place you can go, a destination.
Deb Caletti
#72. I am beginning to think there are two kinds of people," she said. I waited. "Those who forgive themselves too easily but will not forgive others."
"And?" I asked.
"Those that forgive others too easily but will not forgive themselves.
Deb Caletti
#73. I've always felt that a heart is meant to be given to only one person at a time. And, too, when it moves on, it moves on for good.
Deb Caletti
#74. One thing you can say about daughters and mothers - like it or not, they know the truth about each other.
Deb Caletti
#75. 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
#76. Whipped cream can remind you why it's good to be alive.
Deb Caletti
#77. You look so good," I say, and s***! Oh god, that's not what I meant. S***! "It looks good. The book.
Deb Caletti
#78. If reading counted as a sport, I'd be a gold medalist.
Deb Caletti
#79. 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
#80. Maybe a person's world can grow bigger in all the right ways, not too wide that it becomes shallow, just large enough to preserve its depth.
Deb Caletti
#81. 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
#82. 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
#83. No one is ever quite as strong or as weak as you'd think.
Deb Caletti
#84. 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
#85. All of us create our own versions of an event, of our lives, even, not because we're liars, necessarily, but because we can only see and understand the truth from our own viewpoint, and a shifting viewpoint at that.
Deb Caletti
#86. Because words were hills and valleys you traveled, so lovely sometimes that they hurt your eyes.
Deb Caletti
#88. I vow ... to not let the back & forth of forgiveness interrupt the steadiness of love.
Deb Caletti
#89. Sometimes you're sure dogs have some secret, superior intelligence, and other times you know they're only their simple, goofy selves.
Deb Caletti
#90. 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
#91. But I didn't want to share everything yet ... I needed that time alone with it first, that delicious time where you replay every moment, where you make what has happened more real and also less - it becomes fact the more you repeat it, but it becomes story, too.
Deb Caletti
#92. I've never met a popcorn ball I didn't like.
Deb Caletti
#93. The hurt affects your ability to go forward.
Deb Caletti
#94. Knowing takes its own time. I swear sometimes you've gotta get really, really uncomfortable before it shows up.
Deb Caletti
#95. Being needed was a handy trick. It could fill you up so full you never even noticed all the places that were empty.
Deb Caletti
#96. Elijah's wearing white shorts and a bright green shirt and plaid sneakers. People who dress like they're in a perfume ad shouldn't be trusted, in my opinion. They're disingenuous with floral overtones.
Deb Caletti
#98. We forget that just because something is honest it is not necessary the truth.
Deb Caletti
#99. Ah. Falling in love is such a magical time." "We just met, Damian. I'm not in love." Damian laughs. "I am going to have you clean the stables today, since you are already so full of shit.
Deb Caletti
#100. This is not to say I don't feel my own grief, which can hit powerfully at unexpected times. It's just that the telling does not automatically bring on my own upset, as people assume. I deal more with their reaction than they do with mine, and so you have to choose your timing.
Deb Caletti
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