Quotes from Deb Caletti

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.

You were a stone wall, a fort in high, unreachable trees, an island, my own island, that no boat could reach.

I could forget that part, but it had to have been true.

she wonders if we feel more regret for the things we do or for the things we didn't do

But then again, a person could turn ugly. Their actual look could change when their actions were repulsive.

So I forcibly shove aside my prickles of pissed-off, which is easier than it sounds when millions of little sequined caffeine dancers are doing their big Broadway number on your internal stage. (Page 173)

Hundreds,' Joe says. 'Hundreds and hundreds. But then again, I'm old.' So old, Jesus was in your math class,' I say. I crack myself up.

Always. Stay always. Always.

The problem is, she's done things too often because she didn't what to disappoint people.

You take care of the people you love, but it's true, too, that you take care of the things you own.

If you don't participate, you're just taking up oxygen. (Bunny) Life is a banquet. Approach it with hunger. (Chuck)

Your only job—and it's a big one—is to try to speak and live your own honest truth. That truth might shift. You might need more time to even understand what that truth is. That's it. That's the job. Trying to manage or control everyone else? Not the job. Impossible, besides.

When you raise an animal, you live it like your own child.

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

The point is that you feel uncomfortable, and you're trying to talk yourself out of it because you think you're supposed to be nice.

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.

Empathy took the edge off, and the truth is, we need our edge. Our edge is trying to speak to us, and we are too, too good at shutting it up.

True love, the good, beautiful, one-and-only kind, the kind between loving friends and family and partners who are mostly just trying hard to do their best, it manages to overlook some pieces of its story. It overlooks what he can't give you or how she failed you or what mistakes he made when he was struggling. It stays steady at its center. It evolves, through drought and storm. It grows. It survives.

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

She realizes that all big decisions are ones that must be decided and decided again. She imagines that when you fall in love, you must decide to be in love a million times or more, and when you go to college, you must decide again and again to stay in college,

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.

This was what happened after you'd been together with someone a long time. You loved that it was old and worn and comfy, but sometimes it was old and worn and comfy.

forever is hard enough without it beginning now.

Cars are all jammed up all along the road and a light turns red and someone honks. In every one of those cars there is a story or a hundred stories. For every light on in al of those huge city buildings there is a story. No one knows what I am about to face and no one knows my story and neither do I right then.