Quotes from Deb Caletti

It was strange to have those papers signed. Like any big project or crisis that takes every waking and non-waking moment in your life, it was odd to have it concluded. A move, a college degree, a wedding--something long-strived-for is completed, whatever the outcome, and there is a huge space where it all once was. All that open time now, and a continuing nagging sense that there's something you need to be doing.

Nice can have an edge.

It doesn't matter if we're young. If you love someone, and it's right...We can make it the whole way, Crick.

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.

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.

There was no question that it was a necessary divorce, but that didn't make it less painful. You don't think it will hurt, leaving a marriage like that, do you? But it's the same misguided thinking that makes people ask, after your mother dies, how old she was. If she was ninety, the bereavement isn't supposed to be as crushing. But of course it is. Of course. There's no equation for loss.

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

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.

Adultery often happens, I am sure, because you are on a sinking ship, and you need to leap but can't leap. You are too spineless, maybe, to leap.The water is too dark and choppy and the sea is too large. Saving your own life, even, isn't enough reason to jump- no, you need the hands at your back, pushing, the hands of something as unavoidable and inevitable and imperative as love.It's got to be something that big, you know, to get you to jump.

Running away can also be running to.

You have ordinary moments and ordinary moments and more ordinary moments, and then, suddenly, there is something monumental right there. You have the past and future colliding in the present, your own personal Big Bang, and nothing will ever be the same.

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.

You have the ability to just go on and forget people and how much they are meant, but I don't. You can people in their own little boxes and leave them there. So much for love. So much for soul mates. I'm sorry you don't want to believe the best or how I can change. You put a stake through the heart. I'm the only one who cared enough to suffer like this.

This is what I know. Don't settle for 40, 50, even 80 percent. A relationship—it shouldn't be too small or too tight or even a little scratchy. It shouldn't be embarrassing or uncomfortable or downright ugly. It shouldn't take up space in your closet out of a guilty conscience or convenience or a moment of desire. Do you hear me? It should be perfect for you. It should be lasting.

Oh, every person is a book with chapters. Some are glorious and some are dark and ugly. Every person

He's going for wisdom but the real wisdom is knowing there sometimes isn't any.

Shakti always said we should have a guy we wanted to keep shaving our legs for. I knew what she meant." pg. 129

She can't truly outrun her future, but you can't tell her body that.

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.

Grief is everywhere. It's its own being. It walks beside you silently, jumps out at you meanly; pokes you awake at night.

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.

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.

Us frogs understand this.

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