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Deb Caletti

Deb Caletti Quotes

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Famous Deb Caletti Quotes

“I used to think that finding the right one was about the man having a list of certain qualities. If he has them, we'd be compatible and happy. Sort of a checkmark system that was a complete failure. But I found out that a healthy relationship isn't so much about sense of humor or intelligence or attractive. It's about avoiding partners with harmful traits and personality types. And then it's about being with a good person. A good person on his own, and a good person with you. Where the space between you feels uncomplicated and happy. A good relationship is where things just work. They work because, whatever the list of qualities, whatever the reason, you happen to be really, really good together.”

ReasonRelationshipPersonalityHealthyIntelligenceHappyGoodPartnersAttractiveSense Of HumorCompatibleQualitiesHarmfulListCheckmark
Book:The Secret Life of Prince Charming
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“Annabelle and I ate mussels on the back deck and drank beers until we were toasted. Laughed our asses off remembering these people in our classes and those stupid parties where literary people try so hard to be literary people. Cool superiority as a mask for overflowing insecurity. 'Every time I see people in social circumstances like that, I can't help but imagine them in junior high, worrying about who they're going to eat lunch with,' Annabelle had said, and I always thought about that later. You see a person's inner thirteen-year-old and you won't look at them the same way again.”

CompassionSelf EsteemSuperiorityRelatableInferioritySelf Insight
Book:Stay
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“She has decided to keep going, as anyone could tell by her closed eyes and calm expression. 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, and the same thing is true when you decide to run across the United States of America after a horrible tragedy. When you are a person who cares for any other person, you must decide again to care, she also understands.”

LoveRunningDecisionCollegeTragedyCaringPersonIn LoveDecidingKeep On Going
Book:A Heart in a Body in the World
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“You read all kinds of books and see all kinds of movies about the man who is obsessed and devoted, whose focus is a single solid beam, same as the lighthouse and that intense, too. It is Heathcliff with Catherine. It is a vampire with a passionate love stronger than death. We crave that kind of focus from someone else. We'd give anything to be that "loved." But that focus is not some soul-deep pinnacle of perfect devotion - it's only darkness and the tormented ghosts of darkness. It's strange, isn't it, to see a person's gaping emotional wounds, their gnawing needs, as our romance? We long for it, I don't know why, but when we have it, it is a knife at our throat on the banks of Greenlake. It is an unwanted power you'd do anything to be rid of. A power that becomes the ultimate powerlessness.”

BeautifulTrue Love
Book:Stay
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“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.”

LoveTrue Love
Book:The Last Forever
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“Because what is more like love than the ocean? You can play in it, drown in it. It can be clear and bright enough to hurt your eyes, or covered in fog; hidden behind a curve of road, and then suddenly there in full glory. Its waves come like breaths, in and out, in and out, body stretched to forever in its possibilities, and yet its heart lies deep, not fully knowable, inconceivably majestic.”

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Book:Honey, Baby, Sweetheart
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“It's some twisted, limited, grocery-store mentality, where people have to be dairy products or vegetables or frozen foods for us to be able to understand them and feel safe. Maybe we've just become such mega-consumers that we can't deal with anything that's slightly inconvenient (basically, anything that requires thought). I was the tofu amidst the Baking Products and Cleaning Supplies.”

IdentityHigh SchoolFood For Thought
Book:The Fortunes of Indigo Skye
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“All right. Couldn't you just lay your head right down on those words and rest? I wanted those words for my own. No matter how much things change or how time has passed, every single earthly creature pursued the promise of all right, and I was no different. We sought it out in the shelter of caves and underground hollows and in successful husbands and suburban neighborhoods with gates. We fought for it, and manipulated others to get it, and tried to buy it in our organic food and cars with every safety feature and tried to fake it with tough exteriors, and camouflage, and false hopes. We could want a sense of shelter, so badly that we could lose air until the panic of not having it was over, or we could ditch our lives in an instant. The desire for all right was perhaps the only thing we all-every human, every animal- truly had in common, even though the relentless drive for it could make us both stand against one another and seek out one another's warm and flawed company.”

OkayDeb CalettiThe Secrets She KeepsAll RightOkayness
Book:The Secrets She Keeps
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“How can I see anything but all that pain?" "You will. I promise you, you will. There will always be men with guns, Nash. There'll always be... I don't know. Ugliness? But one day you'll see how beautiful those horses are. Jesus, those crazy animals! You'll see them, the beauty of 'em will be bigger than anything awful. Beauty trumps the bad every time, Nash, I swear.”

BeautyUglinessWild HorsesDeb CalettiMustangsWild MustangsThe Secrets She Keepse
Book:The Secrets She Keeps
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“There, I was hit again with a feeling I'd had rather frequently as of late. Deep in the night, or even in broad daylight, a sense of the transitory would abruptly arise, shocking me, slapping my clueless self with the truth of my own age and how much time had already passed, and so suddenly too, it seemed. It would hit hard. And it made me want to keep hold of everything and to toss it away. How could you even talk about that? What were the words for it? I just didn't know where it all went and how it went that fast. What we lost over a lifetime seemed so great.”

TimeLossAgingDeb CalettiThe Secrets She Keeps
Book:The Secrets She Keeps
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“Unconditional love is like a country of two with no laws and no government. Which is all fine if everyone is peaceful and law abiding. In the wrong hands, though, you got looting and crime sprees, and let me tell you, the people who demand unconditional love are usually the ones who will rob and pillage and then blame you because you left your door unlocked.”

HurtDemandDamageUnconditional Love
Book:The Secret Life of Prince Charming
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“It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and drastic unhappiness after The End? Why are sick and dangerous personality types so often shown a passionate and tragic and something to be longed for when those are the very ones you should run for your life from? Think about it. Heathcliff. Romeo. Don Juan. Jay Gatsby. Rochester. Mr. Darcy. From the rigid control freak in The Sound of Music to all the bad boys some woman goes running to the airport to catch in the last minute of every romantic comedy. She should let him leave. Your time is so valuable, and look at these guys--depressive and moody and violent and immature and self-centered. And what about the big daddy of them all, Prince Charming? What was his secret life? We dont know anything about him, other then he looks good and comes to the rescue.”

MenLoveTimeBooksWasteRomanticGarbageMoviesHeathcliffMr DarcyRochesterPrince CharmingRomeoJay Gatsby
Book:The Secret Life of Prince Charming
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“People always ask, "How do you get in the mind of the teen reader?" I think all human beings have these common threads. We struggle with the same things. We desire love and attachment. We have to sort out how much we want to be attached and be independent, how we manage need and being needed and being hurt. These are things that begin when we're - how old? Then in those teen years we start to really feel them.”

PeopleThinkingMindDesireHurtCommonStruggleIndependentManageBeing Hurt
Author:Deb Caletti
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“Sometimes love is a surprise, an instant of recognition, a sudden gift at a sudden moment that makes everything different from then on. Some people will say that's not love, that you can't really love someone you don't know. But, I'm not so sure. Love doesn't seem to follow a plan; it's not a series of steps. It can hit with the force of nature--an earthquake, a tidal wave, a storm of wild relentless energy that is beyond your simple attempts at control.”

PeopleKnowsDifferentSometimesMomentsSeemsEnergyForceSimpleLove IsStepsPlansSeriesSurpriseWaveStormRecognitionInstantLove SomeoneRelentlessEarthquakesForces Of NatureSometimes LoveTidal WavesSure Love
Book:The Nature of Jade
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