Quotes from Deb Caletti

A library is a physical equivalent of a sigh.

Hope was a beacon but it also had the strength of a bully.

Know what you desire, but, more importantly, why you desire it. That why was where the trick lay, I realized. Why was a land of trapdoors and hidden places, trees and rocks that looked like one thing, but were actually another.

The sky is only now turning morning pink. I have that leaving-early-on-a trip feeling, where you're tired but excited and you get to see what's going on in the hours when you're usually still asleep.

I smile. Not just at bad clowns, but at "library science." I like that name. It makes a library sound as vast and mysterious as the universe or the ocean, requiring specific study to be understood.

Quercus: oak tree. The oak takes an extraordinarily long time to produce seeds. While some plants and trees do so within days or weeks, the oak can take up to fifty years to mature enough before it's ready for offspring. The same can be said for certain people who shall remain nameless.

She wants to propel herself into the dark and terrifying universe. Being that unanchored and that much in peril seems preferable to being here, grounded on the earth that wrecked her.

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.

Hey," I say back. It's a Hey of Almost Forgiveness. "I've got something I want to show you. Will you come somewhere with me?" Oh, all right. As long as it's anywhere. "Okay.

And maybe that's the closest definition for the word we can get, a life equation: An absence of wanting equals happiness.

What is this?" "Plankton, basically," Henry says. "A plant. A bio luminescent plankton called dinoflagellates." Oh, Henry. He's so romantic.

In terms of power, beauty is like glass, isn't it? Shining, but transparent and easily marred.

And, oh, I am riding such a high, full wave of love that I have to fall. Of course I have to. Of course, because life and love is joy and pain, fullness and emptiness, highs and lows, tide in, tide out. I will have to fall hard from that high wave, smack right down on my sorry face, but we are not at that part of the story yet.

Secrets have a shelf life.

And once again, that high, domed sky makes me feel a wide vista of emotion, and once again I could weep at an overturned chair or a torn page, or today, Larry's scruffy beard and the ink on his fingers that I can see from here.

It's a beautiful word. If is a key to any locked door.

Once again, I am translucent. I could break against rocks. I am ten thousand miles down and ten thousand miles across and around and it's too far and too long and too deep, but there is no black-haired body with wide, soft brown eyes looking into mine and seeing exactly who I am.

There. But then I change my mind. I think of us poor, old human beings doing the best we can, struggling with being either too much of who we are or too little.

people bring their same selves to every situation, to all their relationships.

Dread begins to inch in. No. Dread isn't one of those subtle emotions. It moves in and takes over, and then it drips and hangs, like Spanish moss.

I don't stop to imagine home and the people in it, because this is so far from home, I am another person entirely.

I thought I might cry, the way you do when someone gives your some kindness when you most need it but when it seems the most surprising thing.

Feminism was supposed to chase away all of those embarrassing vulnerabilities. At least, you were supposed to be aware that acting helpless was something shameful. So was the tendency to hide your own fear behind the toughness of bad boys, if you had that. I had that. I'm being honest here. The

Then again, could you go through a colonoscopy with someone and not be wedded for life?