Quotes from The Six Rules of Maybe

Deb Caletti ·  336 pages

Rating: (4.1K votes)


“I shouldn't have to be a liar to make someone love me. I shouldn't be so afraid of losing someone that I'll do anything to make them stay.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“If letting go, if letting people and things work themselves out in the way that they needed to without your help was the most important thing, then it was also the hardest.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“Things that came apart could be put together again, but never exactly the same.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“You can want one thing and have a secret wish for its opposite.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“The six rules of maybe
1. respect the power of hope and possibilites. Begin with beleif. Hold onto it.
2. If you known where you want to go, you're already half way there. Know what you desire but, more imporantly, why you desire it. Then go.
3. hopes and dreams and heart's desires require a clear path-get out of your own way
4. Place hope carefully in your own hands and in the hands of others
5. Persist, if necessary
6. That said, most importantly-know when you've reached an end, Quit, give up, do it with courage. Giving up is not failing-it's the chance to begin again.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe



“You were supposed to have hope, right? You were supposed to respect its power and hold on. And so I did. I held, and held, and let hope fill me. But as the days went on, it seemed I could be holding for a long, long time. Hope could be the most powerful thing or the most useless”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“I would have spoken, had my heart not been in my throat”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“The hope was, people like me got to finally find our place in college or in the actual world. People who understood this told you that high school wasn't the actual world, that it was more like a temporary alternate reality you were forced to believe in for four years. A video game you played, where you could never get to the next level no matter how hard you tried.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“You can hold a secret, hold it so far in that it drives nearly every thought and every move you make- your very heartbeat, almost.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“What is it about hairdressers? You tell them 'not too short' and some part of their hairdresser brain hears this as 'whack the shit out of it.' If you never say, 'not too short,' everything is fine. You say it, & it's a guarantee you'll come out ready for the military>”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe



“You've got to say what you mean and mean what you say...Doubt in your voice is an open door people will shove right through.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“I've wished for things and never really had the chance...It's time to stop dreaming and do something about it. You've got to know what you want, then...go.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“Sometimes you're sure dogs have some secret, superior intelligence, and other times you know they're only their simple, goofy selves.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“I'd always thought telling the truth to other people was hard, but maybe that was a snap compared to telling the truth to yourself. Sometimes we just refused to know what we knew.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“My subconscious speaks in a foreign language.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe



“No one is ever quite as strong or as weak as you'd think.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“A person who says "it's your decision" is informing you that your decision sucks.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“Maybe we all just wanted someone to believe in. That's all each of us wanted, and it should be so simple, but it never was simple.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“Being needed was a handy trick. It could fill you up so full you never even noticed all the places that were empty.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“You could try and understand people, you could read books and understand words and concepts and ideas, but you could never understand enough or have enough knowledge to keep away the surprises that both fate and human beings had in store.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe



“A lot of life is just surviving what happens.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“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, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“I had let want in, opened the door ever so slightly. But want without the belief you can get what you want is pointless. You have to hope, so I let that in too. You have to. To want things and go for them and believe, even in impossible situations...Hope was what you had when you had nothing else. Hope was the perfect shiny top on the Christmas tree, the glowing halo of every wish, the endless beacon of a lighthouse bringing tormented ships home at last.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“Control was just wishful thinking, and you controlled things to hedge your bets, to be safe, to guard against loss.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“Most of our parents wanted the best for us, I knew, but we also wanted the best for them.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe



“so what brings you to the doctor today?"
"hmm, im afraid i have the chronic desire to save people"
"i know about that. i've got it too. maybe it's catching."
"not catching enough”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“Truth was funny, because it was an insistent thing, maybe as powerful and insistent as some force of nature, the push of water or wind. You could keep it out only so long, but it had its own will and its own needs, and maybe you could keep it at bay with lies, but not for long, not for always.”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“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, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


“It was practically un-American to not set goals and then do everything you could, everything, to reach them. Quitting-it was a dirty word...”
― Deb Caletti, quote from The Six Rules of Maybe


About the author

Deb Caletti
Born place: San Rafael, California, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Only those who dare may fly”
― Luis Sepúlveda, quote from The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly


“Stalin, whose bullying nature contained a strong streak of cowardice,”
― Antony Beevor, quote from Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942–1943


“Magic made everything feel so impermanent, it was easy to forget that some things, once changed, could never be undone. That not everything was either changeable or infinite. Some roads kept going, and others had an end.”
― V.E. Schwab, quote from A Conjuring of Light


“Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitate to get in the way if you're moving.”
― Timothy Ferriss, quote from The 4-Hour Workweek


“Do you see, Arren, how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it is heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls the universe is changed.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from The Farthest Shore


Interesting books

The Girl of the Sea of Cortez
(812)
The Girl of the Sea...
by Peter Benchley
Seventh Grave and No Body
(18.2K)
Seventh Grave and No...
by Darynda Jones
In a Glass Grimmly
(6.3K)
In a Glass Grimmly
by Adam Gidwitz
The November Criminals
(453)
War Crimes
(2.7K)
War Crimes
by Christie Golden
Elephant Whisperer
(10.7K)
Elephant Whisperer
by Lawrence Anthony

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.