He's Gone Quotes

“This is what happens when nice people are pushed too far. We give too many chances, and so when we've finally had enough, we are well and truly done. When a nice person shuts a door on you, it's shut for good.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“Blessed books—they’re a place to be alone, and no one else can come in.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“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.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“Blessed books--they're a place to be alone, and no one else can come in.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“Adultery often happens, I am sure, because you are on a sinking ship, and you need to leap but can't leap. You are too spineless, maybe, to leap.The water is too dark and choppy and the sea is too large. Saving your own life, even, isn't enough reason to jump- no, you need the hands at your back, pushing, the hands of something as unavoidable and inevitable and imperative as love.It's got to be something that big, you know, to get you to jump.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“When you go looking for rescue, you end up trapped in your own weakness.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“There was no question that it was a necessary divorce, but that didn’t make it less painful. You don’t think it will hurt, leaving a marriage like that, do you? But it’s the same misguided thinking that makes people ask, after your mother dies, how old she was. If she was ninety, the bereavement isn’t supposed to be as crushing. But of course it is. Of course. There’s no equation for loss.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“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.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“I guess after all those years he had exhausted me. I never knew I was signing up for a battle, but I finally knew that he had won.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“I’ve always felt that a heart is meant to be given to only one person at a time. And, too, when it moves on, it moves on for good.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“He's not coming back. Maybe I do know this after all. Goodbye. I say to him in my head. I say it tenderly. I try to tell him with that one word how sorry I am.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“If this is where we do female bonding, aren’t we supposed to put on an Aretha Franklin song?”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“I’m fine.” Oh, how we love and overuse fine, our all-purpose little evasion. Fine means not fine. Fine means Pity me. Fine means Don’t ask.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“They call an abusive relationship a cycle of violence, when really it’s a cycle of hope. It’s a cycle of misguided optimism. One day that optimism is gone, if you’re lucky.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“Nice is akin to not walking under ladders or stepping on cracks. It’s a superstitious hedging of bets. A part of you thinks your good behavior will ward off evil. Well, apparently that’s not true.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“Admittedly, guilt can be my default setting. After a social gathering, I’m often left with a vague sense of wrongdoing that I try to pinpoint the source of. Had I laughed insensitively or slighted someone unintentionally? And I always feel accused in Nordstrom. The saleswomen look at my jeans and inexpensive haircut and I’m sure they’re thinking I’m about to slip a pair of earrings into my purse. I feel guilty when I eat white bread and when I don’t recycle.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“Ah, human beings. We cause problems to solve problems.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“people bring their same selves to every situation, to all their relationships.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“Nice is often just powerlessness with a smile.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“One of the disappointing truths about divorce is that when you have children together, you are never free of the one you’ve tried so hard to leave. Never.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“I didn’t think it was such a hot idea to encourage kids to believe they led movie-star lives, even for a night.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“I guess you don’t turn away a rescuer in hopes of a better one. You’re thankful.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“first you’re sure that love is larger than any obstacle, but then love comes to feel flimsy measured against what’s been lost—family and friends and a history.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“That’s where Ian and I fell in love—a Little League game.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“I’m sure I’m not the only wife who feels that—the small relief at his absence. I love him very much, I do; but the house to yourself … No need for conversation or company or the press of his presence”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“You’re an asshole alive, you’re still an asshole dead.”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“Feminism was supposed to chase away all of those embarrassing vulnerabilities. At least, you were supposed to be aware that acting helpless was something shameful. So was the tendency to hide your own fear behind the toughness of bad boys, if you had that. I had that. I’m being honest here. The”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“A parent’s experience is an unknowable one. How, after all, can a child fathom what it means to be a parent, let alone a parent of a certain generation, with a certain personal history, with a certain spouse, with even a certain child? I get ready for my meeting with”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone

“back of that woman’s dress that night”
― Deb Caletti, He's Gone