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And pity--people who inspire it in you are actually very powerful people. To get someone else to take care of you, to feel sorry for you--that takes a lot of strength, smarts, manipulation. Very powerful people.

Deb Caletti

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Deb Caletti
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: June 16
Novelist
Writer
San Rafael
California
People
Powerful
Smarts
Actually
Manipulation
Else
Pity
Someone
Inspire
Care
Sorry
Take
Smart
Feel
Strength
Feels
Takes

More quotes by Deb Caletti

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Empathy took the edge off, and the truth is, we need our edge. Our edge is trying to speak to us, and we are too, too good at shutting it up.
Deb Caletti
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This is just one of those annoying and unjust differences between you and your younger sibling...I was probably fifteen before I could go to a friend's house without giving mom an FBI dossier on the people Bex can practically hitchhike on the freeway with a mere Have fun, honey.
Deb Caletti
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Maybe some people just had trouble with forever.
Deb Caletti
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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.
Deb Caletti
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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.
Deb Caletti
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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.
Deb Caletti
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The most true-love words are not the ones that grasp and hold and bind you, twisting you both up together in some black dance. No, they are ones that leave you free to stand alone on your own solid ground, leave him to do the same, a tender space between you.
Deb Caletti
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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.
Deb Caletti
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Maybe I was being too picky. Maybe I didn't want to be close to anyone. Maybe I'd just be the type who couldn't feel love all the way or something. I couldn't tell what was wrong, but what was wrong was that it just wasn't right.
Deb Caletti
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Blessed books—they’re a place to be alone, and no one else can come in.
Deb Caletti
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We had lain together, skin on skin, been as close as two people could, and he was a stranger. He was that someone who you are afraid of as a child, stranger. They never told you that stranger might be someone you knew.
Deb Caletti
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I could forget that part, but it had to have been true.
Deb Caletti
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We can get so wrapped up in our own misconceptions that we miss the simple beauty of the truth.
Deb Caletti
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A lady I will be, but a man's accessory, his handbag, no thank you. I will not be someone's ornament. I will not just be someone's honey, baby, sweetheart.
Deb Caletti
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Love. She looked at me with those blue eyes. Isn't it astonishing how confused and complicated such a small,simple word is? It attracts so many other things, doesn't it, that stick to it like barnacles on rock...fear, guilt. Need. You can't even see the rock anymore. I imagine love in its purest form is a rare thing.
Deb Caletti
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She'd be one of those parents who left a kid behind at a rest stop, driving for miles before she noticed. We'd hear about her on the evening news.
Deb Caletti
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No, Mom. I said fine. It's just your tone. Ah, yes- the tone. The nasty traitor.
Deb Caletti
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It made me wonder how many times we forgive just because we don't want to lose someone, even if they don't deserve our forgiveness.
Deb Caletti
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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.
Deb Caletti
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I know parental embarrassment usually stops somewhere at fifteen, but he just kept on giving me good reasons.
Deb Caletti