The Secrets She Keeps Quotes

“When it comes to sisters, it seems one stays and one goes, one remains bound and the other is set free. She is who she is in good part because of who Gloria isn't. In order to be herself, in order to be different from her sister, she had to take what was left over, the opposite, unchosen road. She is both glad and furious about it.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps

“I always seemed to forget that needing your mother and getting what you needed from your mother were separate but neighboring planets.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps

“That night, after we turned out the light, the red digital numbers of the bedside clock stared me down. I tried to ignore it, but of all household objects, bedside clocks are the most insistent, more than beeping refrigerators and door alarms, more than kitchen timers and even blaring radios. It’s the strong silent types that get you.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps: A Novel

“All right. Couldn't you just lay your head right down on those words and rest? I wanted those words for my own. No matter how much things change or how time has passed, every single earthly creature pursued the promise of all right, and I was no different. We sought it out in the shelter of caves and underground hollows and in successful husbands and suburban neighborhoods with gates. We fought for it, and manipulated others to get it, and tried to buy it in our organic food and cars with every safety feature and tried to fake it with tough exteriors, and camouflage, and false hopes. We could want a sense of shelter, so badly that we could lose air until the panic of not having it was over, or we could ditch our lives in an instant. The desire for all right was perhaps the only thing we all-every human, every animal- truly had in common, even though the relentless drive for it could make us both stand against one another and seek out one another's warm and flawed company.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps

“Don't you wish you could live inside a book sometimes?"

"All the time.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps

“I always seemed to forget that needing your mother and getting what you needed from your”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps: A Novel

“Those are such beautiful words aren't they? Happy ending?" Lilly says. They are. They so are. But after all she's seen, Nash doesn't know if she believes in those particular words. She believes in something intricate and thorny, she thinks then. What she believes is that the story goes on.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps

“There, I was hit again with a feeling I'd had rather frequently as of late. Deep in the night, or even in broad daylight, a sense of the transitory would abruptly arise, shocking me, slapping my clueless self with the truth of my own age and how much time had already passed, and so suddenly too, it seemed. It would hit hard. And it made me want to keep hold of everything and to toss it away. How could you even talk about that? What were the words for it? I just didn't know where it all went and how it went that fast. What we lost over a lifetime seemed so great.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps

“How can I see anything but all that pain?"

"You will. I promise you, you will. There will always be men with guns, Nash. There'll always be... I don't know. Ugliness? But one day you'll see how beautiful those horses are. Jesus, those crazy animals! You'll see them, the beauty of 'em will be bigger than anything awful. Beauty trumps the bad every time, Nash, I swear.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps

“Nash knows what it means to give your favorite books- it's like handing over a piece of yourself and asking the person to understand it, maybe even treasure it.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps

“Anger has grand plans that sometimes look foolish later.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps

“The first rule of marital success: Don’t marry crazy and don’t be crazy.”
― Deb Caletti, The Secrets She Keeps