Deb Caletti

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__ 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__ never do that! Someday, unless you are very, very lucky, you__l have a story to tell. Or not to tell.

I had always had a little problem looking out for myself in love. I was afraid people would leave me. So I sort of clung and did everything possible to keep someone around. I didn't have a hard talk with myself about who I was keeping around. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. I clung to people like human life preservers. I thought i'd die if someone left me. Its ironic because now I'm the one who's leaving.

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

Bliss is the ocean, a towel on the sand, the sun out, the chance to swim in waves or walk dragging a stick behind you, a good book, a cold drink.

My most memorable teacher was Rich Campe, my third-grade teacher at Fairlands Elementary in Pleasanton, California.

I thought about him everyday until then. I started having these conversations with him in my head that you have when you meet someone you sense is going to be important in your life.

Life and our love for others is a balancing act, I understand then; a dance between our instinct to be safe and hold fast, and our drive to flee, to run - from danger, toward new places to feed ourselves.

If happiness shouldn't make you so miserable, misery shouldn't make you so happy.

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

You can hold a secret, hold it so far in that it drives nearly every thought and every move you make- your very heartbeat, almost.

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

It was about the way a moment, a single moment, could change things and make you decide to try to be someone different.

We should not give away a moment to anyone who does not deserve it.

It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj Mahal.

You can want one thing and have a secret wish for its opposite.

You have the ability to just go on and forget people and how much they are meant, but I don't. You can people in their own little boxes and leave them there. So much for love. So much for soul mates. I'm sorry you don't want to believe the best or how I can change. You put a stake through the heart. I'm the only one who cared enough to suffer like this.

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__ep, even that was possible.

It was strange to have those papers signed. Like any big project or crisis that takes every waking and non-waking moment in your life, it was odd to have it concluded. A move, a college degree, a wedding--something long-strived-for is completed, whatever the outcome, and there is a huge space where it all once was. All that open time now, and a continuing nagging sense that there's something you need to be doing.