Deb Caletti

“Real tough guys don't swear, they just do.”

“Knowledge was a personal life preserver you could always count on when you were swimming in the deep end”

“Love in its purest form. Not television love, with its glare and hollow and sequined glint; not sex and allure, all high shoes and high drama, everything both too small and in too much excess. But just love. Love like rain, like the smell of a tangerine, like a surprise found in your pocket.”

“I knew something else, too: It's human nature to want to help and soothe and save with your love, but it's also arrogant.”

“More than anything, I like just being there while he works, doing what he knows to do, in his own place.”

“I liked the idea of bouncy, open-air Jeeps and I liked the outfits with all the pockets, only I didn't really want to live in Africa and be shot by poachers/get malaria/get stabbed to death.”

“I felt a constant, low-flying desperation, the kind you feel when you are trying, trying, trying to get something you will never, ever get.”

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

“Good guy. There was efficiency to male language. Those two words were what guys said about other guys that they really respected. Guys they could count on, that were solid, whose word you trusted...The language for the other kind of men-even more efficient. Cut down to a single word they deserved. Asshole.”

“Still, past assholes could make a person feel skittish. You had to be careful. It could all suddenly be different than you thought it was. A big possible mistake could be hidden anywhere, ready to blow up everything, same as stepping on a land mine.”

“I'm staying out of this. It's the whole culture of all-consuming nowness I try to avoid. Ever present and screaming its message in the halls, on television, on everyone's personal web pages. Do me, I'm yours. I'm part of the counterculture who actually thinks about the future. Subversive activities are always best kept a secret so I keep my mouth shut.”

“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.”

“...forever is hard enough without it beginning now.”

“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.”

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

“It doesn't matter if we're young. If you love someone, and it's right...We can make it the whole way, Crick.”

“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.”

“Cool superiority as a mask for overflowing insecurity.”

“I love to see those paragliders weaving softly around Moon Point, their legs floating above you in the air. When they drift in for a landing, their feet touch the ground and they trot forward from the continued motion of the glider, which billows down like a setting sun. I never get tired of watching them and I've seen them thousands of times. I always wondered what that kind of freedom would feel like.”

“You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. I don't why stories worked that way, but they did.”

“Sometimes that's all you need. To know it's not broken. To know you're still whole and that you'll heal.”

“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.”

“Fate's got a fucking sick sense of humor. Fate is a shape-shifter. It's the kindest and most generous entity imaginable, laying out more goodness than a person deserves, and then it shrinks and curls and forms into something grotesque. You think its one thing, but then its another.”

“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.”

“We were right to come here, if only because the ocean reminded you that impossible things were possible. Miles and miles of the deepest waters that moved like clockwork were possible. Creatures like jellyfish and sea urchins were, too. Millions and jillions of the tiniest grains of sand to form one long, soft beach—yep, even that was possible.”

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

“There's a Reasonable Explanation' is definitely a place you can go, a destination.”

“They never told you that stranger might be someone you knew.”

“Us frogs understand this.”

“Nice can have an edge.”

“I know parental embarrassment usually stops somewhere at fifteen, but he just kept on giving me good reasons.”

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

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

“She once led this secret uprising to switch the voice boxes of Barbies and G.I. Joes. When they hit the shelves, G.I. Joe said, 'Let's go shopping!' and Barbie said, 'The enemy must be overtaken.'I laugh. "No way.""Yes way. Sex-role stereotyping in children's toys, all that.”

“Thousands of years of tradition. People don't see the humanity that lies in the animals, same as people don't see the animal that is within humans. The first time I saw Jum, she was trying to lift her dead brother up with her trunk. She was trying to get him to stand again. She'd even stuffed grass in his mouth to try to get him to eat”

“Onyx is angry," Damian says. "Onyx has a right to be angry. You've got to remember, for many elephants, their life is that of a human in a war-torn country. Ravaged homes, killed relatives, separation," Damian says. Here's another thing I've learned over two months--every elephants here has a sad story. Every captive elephant's story is one of loss and separation. Something to remember every time you see happy people getting elephant rides.”

“You get to thinking that maybe the diving line shouldn't be animals and people but good and bad.”

“He's alright. He's fine," Dad says, his usual line whenever Oliver gets hurt. It means: Go away. Don't baby him. Don't show too much compassion. The other dads do this too. It's some kind of group hysteria, based on some fatherly fear that says compassion equals homosexuality.”

“A dog — a dog teaches us so much about love. Wordless, imperfect love; love that is constant, love that is simplegoodness, love that forgives not only bad singing and embarrassments, but misunderstandings and harsh words.Love that sits and stays and stays and stays, until it finally becomes its own forever. Love, stronger than death. A dog is a four-legged reminder that love comes and time passes and then your heart breaks.”

“There are so many different fifteens. And eighteens. And forty-twos, for that matter. Mature fifteens and young fifteens and wise fifteens and lost fifteens. And angry fifteens.”

“Stories took twists and turns down fairy-tale paths or down very human everyday ones. You think you’re at the end of the book, and it’s only the end of a chapter.”

“The scariest part of forever is that nothing is.”

“The hurt affects your ability to go forward.”

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

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

“He’s good, all right,” Mom said. “But I guess there’s something else. About being sure. Sure about anything. Right comes with right timing.”

“She would bring you some great book because she was a book matchmaker, because she loved books the way other girls loved clothes.”

“But an apology too — you think you’re giving something, but you’re not. You’rereally 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.”

“I grow green beans in my garden. The one thing I know about harvesting them is that you need to train your eyes to see the beans. At first it all looks like leaves, until you see one bean and then another and another. If you want clarity, too, you have to look hard. You have to look under things and look from different angles. You'll see what you need to when you do that. A hundred beans, suddenly.”

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