Top 252 Quotes & Sayings by Deb Caletti - Page 2

I don’t know why we do it. But sometimes we just swim straight for the net.

Because that’s how it works after something terrible has happened. You know this is true if something terrible has ever happened to you. A thousand objects take on new meaning. Everything is a reminder of something else.

A person shows signs of clutching on too fast, of being needy, of not hearing the word "no," of jealousy, of guarding you and your freedom. But the signs can be so small they skitter right past you. Sometimes they dance past, looking satiny, something you should applaud. Someone's jealousy can make you feel good. Special. But it's not even about you. It's about a hand that is already gripping. It's about their need, circling around your throat

Stereotypes are fast and easy, but they are lies, and the truth takes its time.

Accents are funny in that they have this odd draw for us, yet we forget we have one, too. No one is without an accent, but the one you’ve got seems like oatmeal to their caviar.

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

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.

We are all a volume on a shelf of a library, a story unto ourselves, never possibly described with one word or even very accurately with thousands. A person is never as quiet or unrestrained as they seem, or as bad or good, as vulnerable or as strong, as sweet or as fiesty; we are thickly layered, page upon lying page, behind simple covers. And love - it is not the book itself, but the binding. It can rip us apart or hold us together.

I've heard that people stand in bad situations because a relationship like that gets turned up by degrees. It is said that a frog will jump out of a pot of boiling water. Place him in a pot and turn it up a little at a time, and he will stay until he is boiled to death. Us frogs understand this.

If you look up "charming" in the dictionary, you'll see that it not only has references to strong attraction, but to spells and magic. Then again, what are liars if not great magicians?

We look down our noses at people who've made mistakes in relationships. She's so stupid! How could she do that! Our superiority makes us feel better. But I’d bet everything I have on the fact that people to claim to have a perfect record in love are either lying or have very limited dating experience. People who say, I’d never do that! Someday, unless you are very, very lucky, you’ll have a story to tell. Or not to tell.

Maybe we all just wanted someone to believe in. That's all each of us wanted, and it should be so simple, but it never was simple.

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

Sometimes you've got to make a mess before you clean it up.

A person who says "it's your decision" is informing you that your decision sucks.

Supposedly there's an actual, researched link between extreme creativity and mental illness, and I believe it because I've seen it with my own eyes.

Cool superiority as a mask for overflowing insecurity.

Because words were hills and valleys you traveled, so lovely sometimes that they hurt your eyes.

We hurt each other, is the point. Hurt, annoy, embarrass, but move on. People, it just doesn't work that way. Your own feelings get so complicated that you forget the ways another human being can be vulnerable. You spend a lot of energy protecting yourself. All those layers and motivations and feelings. You get hurt, you stay hurt sometimes. The hurt affects your ability to go forward. And words. All the words between us. Words can be permanent. Certain ones are impossible to forgive.

Maybe we all just want to feel special, even for a little while, to be fooled for a bit into feeling something besides the truth of our own ordinariness.

It's hard to see clearly when your eyes are squinched tight out of fear.

A drop of poison on that gathering snow. That moment in the fairy tale when we know what just happened but the princess doesn’t.

This is what I know. Don't settle for 40, 50, or even 80 percent. A relationship-it shouldn't be too small or too tight or even a little scratchy. It shouldn't take up space in your closet out of guilty conscience or convenience or a moment of desire. Do you hear me? It shold be perfect for you. It should be lasting. Wait. wait for 100 percent.

It's good to let God pick a man for you. We don't do so well when we pick them ourselves. They end up lipsticks in a drawer, all those wrong colors you thought looked so good in the package.

But an apology too — you think you’re giving something, but you’re not. You’re really asking for something. You’re asking for forgiveness, you’re asking for the other injured person to make it okay for you. Apologies were harder work for the person getting one than the person giving one.

Beaches, music, and car rides—they could all bring on a sudden bout of deep, dreamy thoughts.

I shouldn't have to be a liar to make someone love me. I shouldn't be so afraid of losing someone that I'll do anything to make them stay.

A person could leave you so quickly. So much history and time and memories, but they snuck away from you, and other things took their place. How could you hold on? Wait. A bigger question. The biggest. How could you hold on and let go?

I don’t know why we insist on pain when pain is so often easy to eliminate. It’s funny the ways we try to punish ourselves when we feel we’ve committed some crime.

You … You had always made the future feel safe. As long as you were in it too, beside me, I could be okay.

This is not just a simple story of "money can't buy happiness." Or maybe that's just what it is. And if it is, why shouldn't it be? Because if this is something we are already supposed to know, then why don't we know it? Why do we chase and scrabble and fight for things to flaunt, why? Why do we reach for power over other people, and through the thin superiority of our possessions, believe we have it? Why do we let money make people bigger, and allow those without it to be made smaller? How did we lose the truth in the frantic, tribal drumbeat of more, more, more?

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.

Sometimes you think you've found love, when it's really just one of those objects that are shiny in a certain light--a trophy, say, or a ring, or a diamond, even. Glass shards, maybe. You've got to be careful, you do. The shine can blind you. The edges can cut you in way you never imagined. It is up to you to allow that or not.

But sometimes, too, you have this little feeling of knowing, this fuzzy, gnawing sense that someone will become a major something in your life. You just know that theirs will be a life you will enter and become a part of.

Most of our parents wanted the best for us, I knew, but we also wanted the best for them.

Maybe it was wrong, or maybe impossible, but I wanted the truth to be one thing. One solid thing.

...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.

We don't want you convicted for condiment theft. You go to that prison, you'll meet big-time operators. Maple syrup stealers.

Here, kitty, kitty, Chico says. The cover of his cage is still on, making his tiny clown voice slightly muffled. I feel bad for him under there, just waiting to start his evil little day...Freud walks toward Chico in his slinky fashion, sits under his cage and just stares. We have satanic pets...our pets seem to have made a pact with the devil.

The hurt affects your ability to go forward.

I was like a chocolate in a box, looking well behaved and perfect in place, all the while harboring a secret center.

Funny the only two times we use the phrase "seeing someone" are when we are referring to being in a a relationship or getting psychological help.

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

It makes you realize how basically everything we do comes down to a) mating or b) competing for resources. It’s just like Animal Planet, only we’ve got Cover Girl and Victoria’s Secret instead of colored feathers and fancy markings, and the violence occurs at the Nordstrom’s Half-Yearly Sale.

If your life truths have to be protected like some people keep their couches in plastic then ciao. have a nice life. if we bump into eachoter at Target, i'm the one buying the sour gummy worms and thats all you need to know about me.

I kept trying to talk myself out of my second thoughts when they were trying to help me. My advice? When it comes to relationships, second thoughts should be promoted.

One of the hardest tasks as a human being is knowing when to keep an open mind, and when not to.

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

Love with someone else, an actual person, was another matter. People got hurt doing that. People cried and wrapped their arms around themselves and rocked with loss. Loving words got turned to fierce, sharp, whip-cracks of anger that lefft permanent marks. At the least, it disappointed you. At most, it damaged you.

Sometimes maybe you should let someone you love travel great distances away from you. You shouldn’t think you needed to set out to retrieve them and put them back where they belonged. Sometimes they were only safe and happy, like Annabelle Aurora. And then other times, it was just possible they were lost at sea. It would be your duty, then, to get out into the boat and search, even if the waves were choppy and the wind was howling the protests of the dead.

They say religion is about love, but you wonder how much of it really is about fear.

Most people, it seems like they've only got one part of the equation down. Caring for themselves, or caring for someone else. And I'v learned how important it is to have both.

Control was just wishful thinking, and you controlled things to hedge your bets, to be safe, to guard against loss.

The favorite game of temperamental people is Try to Guess Why I’m Ticked Off. (Contestant number one, Why do YOU think he’s pissed off? Why, I’m not sure, Bob, but I’m going to go with ‘Because I Left the Faucet Dripping.’ BEEP. I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. The correct answer is: ‘Because You Happen to Exist.’)

Love is ease, love is comfort, love is support and respect. Love is not punishing or controlling. Love lets you grow and breathe. Love's passion is only good passion -- swirling-leaves-on-a-fall-day passion, a-sky-full-of-magnificent-stars passion -- not angst and anxiety. Love is not hurt and harm. Love is never unsafe. Love is sleeping like puzzle pieces. It's your own garden you protect; it's a field of wildflowers you move about in both freely and together.

It was possible, maybe, to have facts in your mind that weren't facts at all. You could build a whole life's story on false assumptions. You could make truths out of untruths and untruths out of truths. Until you spoke them, really said them out loud or checked for sure, you may not have known which were which.

Sometimes you build up these walls, you build and you build and you build up these walls and you think they’re so strong, but then someone can come along and tip them over with only his fingers, or the weight of his breath.

You can forget that other people carry pieces of your own story around in their heads. I've always thought--put together all those random pieces form everyone who's ever known you from your parents to the guy who once sat next to you on a bus, and you'd probably see a fuller version of your life than you even did while living it.

Maybe sometimes you just feel like everything can be taken from you all at once.

I don't get why prom is like a mini-wedding these days...No one should spend that kind of money for a high school dance.