Deb Caletti

“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.”

“The most basic and somehow forgettable thing is this: Love is not pain. Love is goodness. And real love--it's less shiny than solid and simple.”

“It's human nature to want to help and soothe and save with your love, but it's also arrogant.”

“Often, marriage was solitude, with company.”

“It was one of those times you feel a sense of loss, even though you didn't have something in the first place. I guess that's what disappointment is- a sense of loss for something you never had.”

“I am beginning to think there are two kinds of people," she said. I waited. "Those who forgive themselves too easily but will not forgive others." "And?" I asked. "Those that forgive others too easily but will not forgive themselves.”

“I think a setting is hugely important. I look at setting as a character with its own look, sound, history, quirks, goofy temperaments and moods.”

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

“I was a book lover from the beginning. I loved, love, words and images and ideas, the ways a book can make you feel things deeply or help you understand something you never even knew there were words for.”

“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." (pg. 71)”

“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.”

“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.”

“In a lifetime, the recipe always needs amending - more of this, a little less of that, what to do now that the cake has fallen.”

“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.”

“If you think about becoming a writer, that's just really one of the big dreams I had. It's really important to have those dreams and pursue your passions.”

“You could try and understand people, you could read books and understand words and concepts and ideas, but you could never understand enough or have enough knowledge to keep away the surprises that both fate and human beings had in store.”

“If time heals all wounds, and a book can hold a person's entire life, then you can speed up the process with a pulp time warp.”

“I would eat fruitcake if there'd been a nuclear war and I'd run out of canned goods.”

“My dream was, and always had been, to write a book. To be a writer.”

“When you go looking for rescue, you end up trapped in your own weakness.”