Sarah Dessen Quotes (240 Quotes)

This was always the problem with my mother and me, I suddenly realized. There were so many things we thought we agreed on, but anythign can have two meanings. Like sides of a coin, it just matters how it falls.

But I always worked harder when I was up against something, or when someone assumed I couldn't succeed. That's what drove me, all those nights studying. The fact that so many figured I couldn't do it.

I just thought to my self, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural chemistry, if you will. And I had a feeling that something big was going to happen. To both of us. That we were, in fact, meant to be together.

Maybe marriage, like life, is'nt only about the big moments, whether they be good or bad. Maybe it's all the small things - like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day - that stretches out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.

Yes, it sucked getting dumped. But wasn't it better to just be brutally honest? To admit that your feeling for someone is never going to be powerful enough to justify taking up any more of their time? I was doing him a favor, really. Freeing him up for a better opportunity. In fact, I was a practically a saint, if you really thought about it. Exactly.

I'd learn that it's not just where you go, but how you choose to get there. So I pulled that sign off the green bike - ENJOY YOUR RIDE! - and went inside to take the first step toward doing just that.

Morning would come before we knew it. It always did. But we still had the night, and for now, we were together, so I just closed my eyes and drank it all in.

You didn't fail. You just opted out. There's a difference.

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.

It was like discovering that some part of you wasn't yours at all. And it made me wonder what else I couldn't claim.

We can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.

For any of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You can never know for sure, so you´d better make every second count

Life can be long or short, it all depends on how you choose to live it. it's like forever, always changing. for any of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. you can never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count. what you have to decide is how you want your life to be. if your forever was ending tomorrow, is this how you'd want to have spent it?

This was just one night, one chance to vary and see where it took me. The fireflies were probably already out: maybe it wasn't just a season or a time but a whole world I'd forgotten. I'd never know until I stepped out into it. So I did.

But I think, personally, that it would be worse to have been alone all that time. Sure, maybe I would have protected my heart from some things, but would that really have been better? To hold myself apart because I was too scared that something might no be forever?

I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I'd practically invented

No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.

You bought me some forks. And knives. And spoons. Beacause - you love me!

Impulsiveness can be charming but deliberation can have an appeal, as well.

Oh darling, don't be bitter. It's the first instinct of the weak.

You own a Tic Tac. Gum is just borrowed. - Esther

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.

Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was so damned hard.

When he stopped walking and kissed me a few minutes later, it was like time had stopped, with the air, my heart, and the world all so still. And it was this I remembered every other time I was with Marshall.

Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.

Maybe you could go backwards and forwards at the same time, but it wasn't easy. You had to want to.

We were all staring as we passes him, slowly, like a tourist at a wildlife park watching elephants from the safety of their wagon.

But it was even worse when you knew at that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldnÆt even budge.

I meant what I said to you. I wasn't playing some kind of summer game. Everything I said was true, from the first day. EVERY GODDAMN WORD

Once, I was easy. Now, I was choosy. See? Big difference.

You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It's not overrated. There's a reason for all those songs.

It shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder--or impossible-- to lose.

People don't change. If anything, you get more set in your ways as you get older, not less

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.

Like I, of all people, didn't know better than to lead a total stranger to the point where they could hurt me most, knowing how easily they'd be able to find their way back to it.

Whenever something great happens, you're always kind of poised for the universe to correct itself.

Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we'd found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.

None of it meant anything, and all of it was important.

Wes wants to be with Macy. And Macy, whether she'll admit it or not, wants to be with Wes. And yet they're not together, which is not only unjust, but when you think about it, tragical!

But it was too early to know: there were always more pages to go, more words to be written, before the story was over

I should have told you from the start. I will let you down.

She said writting novels was like childbirth: if you truly remembered how awful it got, you'd never do it again.

It was like reaching for someone's hand, then missing their fingers, or even their arm, and hitting their shoulder instead. But no matter. You hang on tight anyway.