Book Quotes: The Story of Us by Deb Caletti

Book Quotes are posts dedicated to the wonder of writing. There are books you read and you just know that it has pieces of wisdom within it, buried right there in the words. Here are the ones I'm documenting. 

(***Which means that if you have NOT read this book yet, there is a potential for spoilers!)

The Story of Us

by Deb Caletti

(review here!)

Maybe some people just had trouble with forever.

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Stories are what you have when the place is gone and the dried-up roses have crumbled and the ring is lost and that old car is finally junked. Stories are where the meaning ends up.

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It was Mom's optimism coming down the genetic line, taking a left turn and becoming some twisted belief that you could cover up most shit with enthusiastic effort. Or maybe I'd learned this from Jupiter. She did the same thing every morning in the front yard.

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It was kind of beautiful, actually, the brief knowing exchange. If it had been Mom and me, we might have talked for twenty minutes about what we needed and how we felt about it. Someone might have cried. There might have been hugging involved. I didn't necessarily work the way these guys did, but I could see the benefits.

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"Good things don't always lead to bad ones, Crick."

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My mother always said that our own stories were where we made sense of things, but I think all stories have that power. You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. i don't know why the stories work that way, but they did. They're an actual place where confusing things order themselves.

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We go out toward the mountains, head to the pass just outside our town. We'd get lost. And we'd park there, in lost. Away. Escape. I loved that. But a lost-away-escape that was more safe than any found.

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

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The story, our real story is this: doomed, precious, imperfect love. Love, deep and endless and brave in the face of certain loss--through death and leavings and growing up and letting go. Love, given over. It's the tender pulse of every word and every line and every chapter. It's our story, and it's the place where our heart, no matter what, always finds home.