Top 100 Sarah Dessen Quotes
#1. My point is,' Jamie continued, 'not everything's perfect, especially at the beginning. And it's all right to have a little bit of regret every once in a while. It's when you feel it all the time and can't do anything about it ... that's when you get into trouble.'
pg 169-170
Sarah Dessen
#2. I don't talk about my books while I'm writing them: not even my husband knows what a novel's about until it's done.
Sarah Dessen
#3. If you didn't love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and everything that followed it is part of letting it go.
Sarah Dessen
#4. For two hours I'd felt myself stretching tighter and tighter, like a rubber band pulled to the point of snapping. And now, I could feel the smaller, weaker part of myself beginning to fray, tiny bits giving way before the big break.
Sarah Dessen
#5. It's gonna be okay," I said. It was the first time in a long time that I believed it. "It will.
Sarah Dessen
#6. In a way, I was almost happy to see her. The worst part of me, out in the flesh. Blinking back at me in the dim light, daring me to call her a name other than my own.
Sarah Dessen
#7. Who says there has to be a point?" He asked. "Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do.
Sarah Dessen
#8. You can't just turn your heart off like a faucet; you have to go to the source and dry it out, drop by drop.
Sarah Dessen
#9. It doesn't matter, anyway, why you like me. Just that you do.
Sarah Dessen
#10. You know, when it works, love is amazing. It's not overrated.
Sarah Dessen
#11. Hey, and for what it's worth? Friends don't leave you alone in the woods. Friends are the ones who come and take you out.
Sarah Dessen
#12. 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.
Sarah Dessen
#13. 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.
Sarah Dessen
#15. We can't be sad about it forever, you know? We've got to think back to the good times and just remember them; that's all we can do. We can't worry about the past or what happened at the end, any more. I can't and you can't.
Sarah Dessen
#16. I still felt unformed, like a cake half baked with edges crisp, but still mushy in the middle.
Sarah Dessen
#17. We were there, together, and in the next room I could hear that monitor beeping. Keeping track of another heart's beat and giving enduring, solid proof of our own.
Sarah Dessen
#18. My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest.
Sarah Dessen
#19. Lost means forever, it's gone. But misplaced ... that means it's still around, somewhere.
Sarah Dessen
#21. Now, see," Wes said, nodding at my plate, "this is going to blow your mind."
I looked at him. "It's a waffle, not the second coming.
Sarah Dessen
#22. You don't have to make things harder then they have to be just to prove a point.
Sarah Dessen
#23. That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.
Sarah Dessen
#24. No one knew where I was, not a soul, and while I thought this was what I wanted, I realized, in the quiet of that room, that it was the scariest thing of all
Sarah Dessen
#25. 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!
Sarah Dessen
#26. There's something nice about the silence of a car ride in the dark, going home. When you were tired of the radio and conversation, and it was okay to just be alone with your thoughts and the road ahead. If you're that comfortable with someone, you don't have to talk.
Sarah Dessen
#27. I'd done the right thing. I always did. It just would have been nice if someone had noticed.
Sarah Dessen
#28. 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.
Sarah Dessen
#29. Sometimes, we just have to be happy with what people can offer us. Even if it's not what we want, at least it's something.
Sarah Dessen
#30. This isn't ideal. Very few things are. Sometimes, you have to manufacture your own history. Give fate a push, so to speak. You know?
Sarah Dessen
#31. Sometimes, fewer choices can be a good thing.
Sarah Dessen
#32. The only person you can be sure to control, always, is yourself.
Sarah Dessen
#33. If nothing else, now we knew where to find each other, even if only time would tell if either of us would ever come looking.
Sarah Dessen
#34. But as i lay there, it only seemes like silence filling my ears. And the thing was, it was so freaking loud.
Sarah Dessen
#35. This life was fleeting, and I was still searching for the way I wanted to spend it that would make me happy, full, okay again. I didn't know what it was, not yet. But something told me I wouldn't find it here.
Sarah Dessen
#36. I think whenever a writer is really enjoying themselves and liking what they are doing, that shows on the page.
Sarah Dessen
#37. I should have told you from the start. I will let you down.
Sarah Dessen
#38. No one ever sees everything the same way you do; it just doesn't happen. So when you find one person who gets a couple of things, especially if they're important ones ... you might as well hold on to them.
Sarah Dessen
#39. I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell anyone. As long as I didn't say it aloud, it wasn't real.
Sarah Dessen
#40. It took a lot to have hope in this world where so little evidence of it existed. Maybe if nothing bad had ever happened, you didn't even consider those clouds and storms ahead. But for the rest of us, even the brightest sunshine carried a chance of rain.
Sarah Dessen
#41. It was just one of those things," I said, "You know, that just happen. You don't think or plan. You just do it.
Sarah Dessen
#42. Fifteen minutes later, a meeting was called.
"Okay, look." Deb's face was dead serious. "I know I just joined this project, and I don't want to offend anyone. But I'm going to be honest. I think you've been going about this all wrong."
"I'm offended," Dave told her flatly.
Sarah Dessen
#43. Someone who normally moved so slowly, this time, for once, was long gone.
Sarah Dessen
#44. Why should i always have to do the looking?why can't other people do the look out for me?
Sarah Dessen
#45. If this was my forever, I wouldn't want to spend it here.
Sarah Dessen
#46. Despite our differences, we did have a history. No one understood where I was coming from the way he did.
Sarah Dessen
#47. This was our common ground, the secret we shared but never spoke aloud.
Sarah Dessen
#48. Shit," Delia said. "I mean, shoot. No, actually, I mean shit. I really do.
Sarah Dessen
#49. Of course it hurts", she grumbled, tipping my head further back. "Life sucks. Get over it
Sarah Dessen
#50. Stuff that would be weird in the bright light of day just wasn't so much once you passed a certain hour.
Sarah Dessen
#51. It's harder that in looks," I told him when I finally got back in the car.
"Most things are,
Sarah Dessen
#52. More like a door being opened a tiny crack to let a sliver of light in. It wasn't enough to see clearly by, but from then on, we would never be fully in the dark again.
Sarah Dessen
#53. I've seen what commitment leads to. Going in is the easy part. It's the ending that sucks!
-Remy
Sarah Dessen
#54. For most of us, once something was busted, it was game over. I would have loved to know how it felt, just once, to have something fall apart and see options instead of endings.
Sarah Dessen
#55. How weird was it that so many bits and pieces, all diverse, could make something whole. Something with potential. 'Perfect.
Sarah Dessen
#56. As if it didnt matter what was on, but instead how hard i was listening.
Sarah Dessen
#57. There was something really great about being able to put something out into the world - a song, an introduction, even my voice - and let people make of it what they wanted. I didn't have to worry about how I looked, or if the image of me people had fit who I really was.
Sarah Dessen
#58. If there's one thing I've learned in the last few months, it's that sometimes you just have to close your eyes and jump.
Sarah Dessen
#59. If only you could really use a fail-proof system to know who was worth keeping and who needed to be thrown away. It would make it so much easier to move through the world, picking and choosing what connections to make, or whether to make any at all.
Sarah Dessen
#60. But those words were only the middle of the story. There was a beginning here, too.
Sarah Dessen
#61. Oh darling, don't be bitter. It's the first instinct of the weak.
Sarah Dessen
#62. But it was one thing to be cold over distance, another entirely when they were in your same zip code.
Sarah Dessen
#63. 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.
Sarah Dessen
#64. So I left him there alone to watch history repeat the same events retold again and again on his own.
Sarah Dessen
#65. We would probably never be the way we had been again, but at least we were all together.
Sarah Dessen
#66. Finally he asks, "What if that's not enough? What if I need something else?"
And she replies, "Whatever you need, I will find a way to get it to you. I will give you the moon, and more.
Sarah Dessen
#67. Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.
Sarah Dessen
#68. The truth was, I wasn't sure. But I wanted to keep believing people could change, and it was certainly easier to do so when you were in the midst of it.
Sarah Dessen
#69. As if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.
Sarah Dessen
#70. It's both, it all depends on how you choose to live it. Forever is always changing.'
[About if life is short or long]
Sarah Dessen
#71. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.
Sarah Dessen
#72. Life isn't fair," Owen told her. "Get used to it.
Sarah Dessen
#73. Maybe" she said. "I just wish we'd have a little mishap.It would be reassuring
Sarah Dessen
#74. Maybe it was true, and being a girl could be about interest rates and skinny jeans, riding bikes and wearing pink. Not about any one thing, but everything.
Sarah Dessen
#75. I knew we were together, at least for now. And right then, while I still could, it was exactly where I wanted to be.
Sarah Dessen
#76. I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good.
Sarah Dessen
#77. There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your heart.
Sarah Dessen
#78. Told you. Everything sounds better in the car wash.
Sarah Dessen
#79. Growing up means :propelling yourself forward into whatever lies ahead, one turn of the wheel at a time.
Sarah Dessen
#81. All I'd ever wanted was to forget. but even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below.
Sarah Dessen
#82. The way I see it," she continued, "is that some things are just meant to be the
way they are.
Sarah Dessen
#83. Forgiveness is hard. Acceptance is doable.
Sarah Dessen
#84. See, Colie, it's all about understanding. We're all worth something.
Sarah Dessen
#85. You own a Tic Tac. Gum is just borrowed. - Esther
Sarah Dessen
#86. He always did the leaving. But not this time. She kept walking, and did not look back.
Sarah Dessen
#87. She took the sun when it came and the rain the same way.
Sarah Dessen
#88. Failing sucks. But it's better than the alternative."
"Which is?"
"Not even trying." Now he did look at me, straight on. "Life's short, you know?
Sarah Dessen
#90. It wasn't so much that I was positive. I just wasn't fully subscribing to such a negative way of thinking anymore.
Sarah Dessen
#91. I'd only met him once, at the mall. He was tall, with a big floppy shock of blond hair he was always getting out of his face by jerking his head suddenly to the side, whiplash-style. Rina found this incredibly sexy. It made me nervous. - Caitlin about Jeff
Sarah Dessen
#92. Looking at her, I thought again how beautiful she was - even in jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, she was breathtaking. So much so that it was hard to believe she could ever have looked at herself and seen anything else.
Sarah Dessen
#93. There's a difference between the words father and dad. And it's more than three words.
Sarah Dessen
#94. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone's eyes. Our definitions are as different as we are ourselves.
Sarah Dessen
#95. The bottom line is, what defines you isn't how many times you crash, but the number of times you get back on the bike. As long as it's one more. you're all good.
Sarah Dessen
#96. But the original was there as well - more jaded and rudimentary, functional rather than romantic. It fit not just the yellow house but another door, deep within my own heart. One that had been locked so tight for so long that I was afraid to even try it for fear of what might be on the other side
Sarah Dessen
#97. Just because a person isn't talking about something doesn't mean it's not on their mind. Often, in fact, it's why they won't speak of it.
Sarah Dessen
#98. I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, truths and half-truths, that kept her always at arm's length, behind a closed door, miles away.
Sarah Dessen
#99. My point is, there are a lot of people in the world. No one ever sees everything the same way you do; it just doesn't happen. So when you find one person who gets a couple of things, especially if they're important ones ... you might as well hold on to them. You know?
Sarah Dessen
#100. I always have a goal, even if I keep it to myself. It allows me to keep pushing myself.
Sarah Dessen
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