Sarah Dessen’s “Just Listen” Quotes (53 Quotes)

Everything hurt. I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to the street, and waited. What for, I didn't know. To be rescued. Or found. But no one came. All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.

It hadn't even occured to me that somebody would believe mine.

So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out - out of earshot, out of the house - even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.

Harder to get in than out, like so little else.

It is kind of hard to hold a lot in. But for me… it's sometimes even harder to let it out.

So I left him there alone to watch history repeat the same events retold again and again on his own.

Honesty in principle was one thing. In someone's face, it was another.

It seemed safer to hold it in, where the only one who could judge was me.

So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story.

How it seemed like you could see everything, but certain things were blocked out, hidden.

It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.

The worst part was that I had things I wanted to tell my mother, too many to count, but none of them would go down so easy. She'd been through too much, between my siters-I could not add to the weight. So instead, I did my best to balance it out, bit by bit, word by word, story by story, even if none of them were true.

I am the middle sister. The one in between. Not oldest, not youngest, not boldest, not nicest. I am the shade of gray, the glass half empty or full, depending on your view. In my life, there has been little that I have done first or better than the one preceding or following me. Of all of us, though, I am the only one who has been broken.

It was like when you're a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-mart and it's just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school.

There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.

I didn't want to talk about what happened, so it seemed safest not to talk at all.

It's a big deal when you finally get the chance to do the one thing you want to do -need to do- more than anything. It can kind of scare the crap out of you.

There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.

I just do the best I can under the circumstances.

It's a choice, Annabel. And if you make the wrong one, you have only yourself to blame when there are consequences.

There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn't sure I had it in me to keep looking back.

I mean, at first, it was kind of disappointing. But people recover from disappointment. Otherwise we'd all be hanging from nooses. Right?

It's a funny feeling, being suddenly airborne. Just as you realize it, it's over, and you're sinking.

This is personal, she'd said. Real. This moment was too, even if you couldn't see it at first glance. It was fake on the outside, but so true within. You only had to look, really look to tell.

All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough by to shoulder the rest.

I mean, to me, freaking out is different. More of a running away, not telling anyone what's wrong, slowly simmering until you burst kind of thing.

Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.

This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don't jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going.

And while it is hard enough to take away something that makes a person happy it's even more difficult when it seems like it's the only thing.

I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.

Not for the first time, I wished both of us could just say what we meant. But that, like so much else, was impossible

This was how I was dealing with everyone and everything lately, taking the good when it came, and the bad the same way, knowing each would pass in its own time.

As if it didnt matter what was on, but instead how hard i was listening.

I thought again how you could never really know what you were seeing with just a glance, in motion, passing by. Good or bad, right or wrong. There was always so much more.

One open, one closed. It was no wonder that the first image that came to mind when I thought of either of my sisters was a door. With Kirsten, it was the front one to our house, through which she was always coming in or out, usually in mid-sentence, a gaggle of friends trailing behind her. Whitney's was the one to her bedroom, which she preferred to keep shut between her and the rest of us, always.

Told you. Everything sounds better in the car wash.

But as i lay there, it only seemes like silence filling my ears. And the thing was, it was so freaking loud.

I understood now. This voice, the one that had been trying to get my attention all this time, calling out to me, begging me to hear it -- it wan't Will's. It was mine.

One week, one strong. One scared, one bold. I was beginning to understand though, that there were no such things as absolutes, not in life, or in people. Like Owen said, it was day by day, if not moment by moment. All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough to shoulder the rest.

Whether it was a song, a person, or a story, there was a lot you couldn't know from just an excerpt, a glance, or part of a chorus.

But those words were only the middle of the story. There was a beginning here, too.

I wanted to tell him so. Find the right words, string them together in the ideal way, knowing that here they would have the best chance of sounding perfect.

Only a real asshole takes liberties with someone else's car stereo. That's serious.

You really get to meet people on such a personal level. There's a real bonding in someone beating the crap out of you.

But you only get so many do-overs in this life, so many chances to, if not change your past, alter your future.

I was so scared about being discovered, but nobody came. Nobody heard. In my own ears, though, my sobs sounded primal and scary, like something I would have turned off if I'd been able to.

People get mad Annabel. Its not the end of the world.

Don't think or judge, just listen.

I wasn't ready for this, but then I probably never would be, and this year, like so much else, wouldn't wait. I had no choice but to get out of my car, with everyone watching and begin in earnest, alone. So I did

Pieces and parts were always easier to process. The full picture, the entire story, was another thing entirely. But you just never knew. Sometimes, people could surprise you.