Quotes from Deb Caletti

We forget that just because something is honest it is not necessarily the truth.

You knew me. You KNOW me. I can't imagine my life without you, without someone who knows me that well.

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.

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.

It's hard to be all that you can be on carrot sticks and criticism.

Doubt in your voice is an open door people will shove right through.

Niceness is expected of her, not honesty.

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

A person is never as quiet as they seem, we are thickly layered page lying upon page behind simple covers.

A secret," he said. "A secret is the heaviest thing in the world.

There are those moments, probably few in a life, where before and after split off from each other forevermore in your mind.

I always seemed to forget that needing your mother and getting what you needed from your mother were separate but neighboring planets.

When it comes to sisters, it seems one stays and one goes, one remains bound and the other is set free. She is who she is in good part because of who Gloria isn't. In order to be herself, in order to be different from her sister, she had to take what was left over, the opposite, unchosen road. She is both glad and furious about it.

I guess I was inching and crawling my way toward Elizabeth Bennett's words about unconditional love. That it was a dangerous thing without heavy doses of mutual respect.

The past is a good place for the past.

Maybe it was better to be who he thought I was than who I thought I was.

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!

Good things don't always lead to bad ones, Crick.

And I make a little vow then, to myself. To not let the backs and forths of forgiveness interrupt the steadiness of love.

Butterflies are trapped first, before they are free.

My father, Bobby Oates*, 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. He looked so nice. He was so nice.

The whistle buried under my skin and became a permanent part of me. I had a radar for certain eyes afterward. It was a heightened awareness of the bad shit that could happen if I wasn't careful, and I could adjust the degree of it, but I would never be able to turn it off.

Books make you feel things hard.

All those maybes are just hope looking for a place to land.