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21 " It's hard to see clearly when your eyes are squinched tight out of fear. "
― Deb Caletti , The Story of Us
22 " 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. "
23 " You were a stone wall, a fort in high,unreachable trees, an island, my own island, that no boat could reach. "
24 " 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. "
25 " 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. "
26 " 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. "
27 " 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. "
28 " It doesn't matter if we're young. If you love someone, and it's right...We can make it the whole way, Crick. "
29 " Good things don’t always lead to bad ones, Crick. "
30 " It makes me nervous, the way the biggest things and the smallest live together day in and day out. "
31 " It was the feeling of not belonging, and longing for your familiar couch and your familiar TV with all those comforting TV people who couldn’t see you. "
32 " Butterflies are trapped first, before they are free. "
33 " Apologies were harder for the person getting one than the person giving one. "
34 " We put God in front of terrifying things, and we knocked three times, and we took drugs and shopped too much and obsessed about success, so that the scary stuff would look farther away than it was. We worried, because maybe if we worried enough, it would act like a spell of safety. All those things, superstitions and addictions and anxiety, they were all about hiding from what scared the shit out of us. "
35 " It’s both harder and easier without words. "
36 " You wanted more from people sometimes. And sometimes,you wanted more from yourself. "
37 " Each story, good and bad, short or long--from that trip to the mall when you saw Santa, to a long, bad illness--they are all a line or a paragraph in our own life manuscript. Two thirds of the way through, even, and it all won't necessarily make sense, but at the end there'll be a beautiful whole, where every sentence of every chapter fits. "
38 " Knowing takes its own time. I swear sometimes you’ve gotta get really, really uncomfortable before it shows up. "
39 " Love was such a delicate thing, requiring tissue-paper touch and the safest place, yet there it was out in the real world, where it got battered by storms of ill will and bad circumstances and demons of your own or of other people. Love didn’t stand a chance. "
40 " Right comes with right timing. "