Top 100 Dessen Quotes
#1. No word has one specific definition.Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life
-Ms.Conyers of Sarah Dessen's Lock and Key
Sarah Dessen
#2. I'm really happy to have the chance to talk about the editing process. It's something that I think doesn't get the weight it deserves, especially with the rise of self-publishing.
Sarah Dessen
#3. And suddenly I felt completely strange, like the distance between us was much much greater than what I could see from where I was standing. Like that line, always so clear to me, had somehow shifted, or never even been where I'd thought it was at all.
Sarah Dessen
#4. You want to take me to a movie?" I asked.
"Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off.
Sarah Dessen
#5. 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
#7. I trailed off and he didn't push me to finish. I was finding that I liked that.
Sarah Dessen
#8. I'd gotten so used to being known as the girl whose dad died, I sometimes forgot that I'd had a life before that.
Sarah Dessen
#10. It's just that ... I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It's the universe's way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It's how life is.
Sarah Dessen
#11. The only thing I can't stand more than seeing something done wrong is seeing it done slowly.
Sarah Dessen
#12. The worst thing you can do if you miss or need someone is let them know it.
Sarah Dessen
#13. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen her actually relax and sit still in a way that made it obvious she wasn't already thinking about the next six things she had to do, and maybe the six after that
Sarah Dessen
#14. Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine.
Sarah Dessen
#15. You really get to meet people on such a personal level. There's a real bonding in someone beating the crap out of you.
Sarah Dessen
#16. If you'll all just follow me over to our top sector here, I'll start your guided tour."
Ellis got up, then followed Riley and Heather, who was dragging her feet, as they fell in behind Deb. "Are there going to be snacks?" he
asked. "I do my best work with snacks.
Sarah Dessen
#17. I was in shock. Funny how the world works. You don't get the something you really covet, but then the universe provides unexpected compensation. Here I thought you had to make a wish for it to come true.
Sarah Dessen
#18. My first signing was at my hometown independent bookstore and everyone in the world came. It was so nice. My family was there, my parents, everybody I worked with, all my friends. So I had this great first reading with a like hundred people there.
Sarah Dessen
#20. 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
#21. Right now, though, I wanted not to think forward or backward, but only to lose myself in the words.
Sarah Dessen
#22. 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
#23. I was drowning in broad daylight and no one could tell.
Sarah Dessen
#25. If you were dead," Owen told her, "you'd have bigger problems than what you were wearing.
Sarah Dessen
#26. Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.
Sarah Dessen
#27. Something had changed in me, even if I didn't know what it was just yet. All I could think was that I felt alive for the first time.
Sarah Dessen
#28. When I was a teen, I was never really into the captain of the football team or the student body president. The guys I liked were quirky and different: They listened to music I'd never heard of, never had lunch or gas money, and could always make you laugh.
Sarah Dessen
#29. 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
#30. In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible.
Sarah Dessen
#31. At the very least you should tell yourself the truth. If you can't trust yourself, who can you trust?
Sarah Dessen
#32. Sometimes, you have to manufacture your own history. Give fate a push, so to speak.
Sarah Dessen
#33. She was dressing for the life she wanted, not the one she had.
Sarah Dessen
#34. Look," he said, "the point is there's no way to be a hundred percent sure about anyone or anything. So you're left with a choice. Either hope for the best, or just expect the worst."
If you expect the worst, you're never disappointed," I pointed out.
Yeah, but who lives like that?
Sarah Dessen
#35. It's gonna be okay," I said. It was the first time in a long time that I believed it. "It will.
Sarah Dessen
#37. It's not always easy being her daughter.'
I think,' she said, 'sometimes it's hard no matter whose daughter you are.
Sarah Dessen
#38. Your mother won a special reward," she told me, "because everyone had a head in her pictures. We all applauded.
Sarah Dessen
#39. Apologies come in all shapes and sizes. You can give diamonds, candy, flowers, or just your deepest heartfelt sentiment.
Sarah Dessen
#40. Together, we looked down at the tiny house, the sole thing on this vast, flat surface. Like the only person living on the moon. It could be either lonely or peaceful, depending on how you looked at it. "It's a start," I said.
Sarah Dessen
#41. I felt like I'd been swimming so hard, and the water growing warmer and warmer the closer I got to the top. I wasn't there yet, but now I could see the surface, rippling just beyond my fingers.
Sarah Dessen
#42. There was nothing, nothing to depend on. And why was I surprised?
Sarah Dessen
#43. Yeah. I mean, acknowledging is easy. Something happened or it didn't. But understanding ... that's where things get sticky.
Sarah Dessen
#44. Funny how a beautiful song could tell such a sad story
Sarah Dessen
#45. The only trick was never giving more that you were willing to lose.
Sarah Dessen
#46. You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right. I
Sarah Dessen
#47. But you could also look at it the other way. Like you're saying no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.
Sarah Dessen
#48. But if something was really important, fate made sure it somehow came back to you and gave you another chance.
Sarah Dessen
#49. If I had to pick, I'd say my favorite book is 'A Prayer For Owen Meany', by John Irving.
Sarah Dessen
#50. What do you do when you finally hear everything you've always thought said aloud?
Sarah Dessen
#51. 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
#54. I thought of all the times we'd been together, how I kept coming closer, then retreating, while he stayed right where he was. A constant in a world where few, if any, really existed.
Sarah Dessen
#55. I would have thought this would make me feel better.. getting to be the one to leave and not the one left behind. But it didn't. Not at all.
Sarah Dessen
#56. Look, the point is there's no way to be a hundred percent sure about anyone or anything. So you're left with a choice. Either hope for the best or just expect the worst.
Sarah Dessen
#57. You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It's always been yes when it comes to you.
Sarah Dessen
#58. I knew that it wouldn't last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place.
Sarah Dessen
#59. Call it crazy, or just chicken salad. But within reason, or without it i was in it too.
Sarah Dessen
#60. The end of a wedding reception is always so depressing. And only the bride and groom are spared, jetting off into the sunset while the rest of us wake up the next morning to just another day.
Sarah Dessen
#61. Only a weak person needed someone else around all the time.
Sarah Dessen
#62. Then, a life was ending. Here, one was about to begin. I didn't believe in signs. But it was hard to ignore the fact that someone, somewhere, might have wanted me to go through this again and see there was another outcome.
Sarah Dessen
#63. Family,"_ _ _"They're the people in your life you don't get
to pick. The ones that are given to you, as opposed to those you get to
choose.
Sarah Dessen
#64. Who says there has to be a point?" He asked. "Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do.
Sarah Dessen
#65. So I pulled back from everything and everyone I'd known ... I realized I'd been changing even before we started moving,that my reinvention began when I was still in the most familiar of places. Once the setting was totally new,though, I finally could be,as well.
Sarah Dessen
#66. 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
#67. Dogs and children loved my boyfriend. It was a simple fact.
Sarah Dessen
#68. But this, too, wasn't true. Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was so dammed hard.
Sarah Dessen
#69. After all with me & Marshall, it had never been about words or conversation, where there was too much to be risked or lost. Here, though, in the quiet pressed against each other, this felt familiar to me. And it was nice to let someone get close again, even if it was just for a little while.
Sarah Dessen
#70. I bet you can't eat ten bananas!"
"I bet you're right.
Sarah Dessen
#71. Once, I was easy. Now, I was choosy. See? Big difference.
Sarah Dessen
#72. So this had been all I wanted, a boy who understood how I felt. Now, though, I sometimes wished for more.
Sarah Dessen
#73. When you had to do something, you had to do it. And eventually, if you were lucky, you did it well.
Sarah Dessen
#74. I want you to give her a possibility. And that's what a key represents. An open door, a chance.
Sarah Dessen
#75. I wasn't shiny and charming like my brother, stunning and graceful like my mother, or smart and dynamic like my friends. That's the thing though. You always thing you want to be noticed...until you are.
Sarah Dessen
#76. But I didn't. I didn't say anything, if only because I had no idea how to respond to such an overture. If my experience with friends was sparse, what I knew about boys- other than a competitors for grades or class rank- was nonexistent
Sarah Dessen
#78. I can't sit and twiddle my thumbs. I have to start writing even if it's miserable some days.
Sarah Dessen
#80. Then I'd crawl back into bed, smelling her all around me, and tell myself that next time, I would lock that window. But I never did.
Sarah Dessen
#81. There was something incongruous about one marriage ending the same day another began, as if there was an exchange program in the universe or something, a trade required in order to keep the numbers even.
Sarah Dessen
#82. It doesn't matter, anyway, why you like me. Just that you do.
Sarah Dessen
#84. 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.
Sarah Dessen
#85. It was kind of soothing, these sounds of lives being lived all around me, for better or for worse. And there I was, in the middle of them all, newly reborn and still waiting for mine to begin.
Sarah Dessen
#86. I always wrote about girls that went to the beach and had that summer that changed everything. So I was interested in what it would be like to live in a tourist town where everyone has these life changing experiences, but your whole life is there.
Sarah Dessen
#87. Like so many before them, they didn't care that my dad was only the messenger. They still wanted to shoot him.
Sarah Dessen
#88. Being self-confident doesn't necessarily start inside. It starts with the rest of the world and leads back to you.
Sarah Dessen
#89. The true story ... is the realization that no time in your life is ever perfect, that even the best memories have cracks you might not see.
Sarah Dessen
#90. If something doesn't work exactly right, or maybe needs some special treatment, you don't just throw it away. Everything can't be fully operational all the time. Sometimes, we need to have the patience to give something the little nudge it needs.
Sarah Dessen
#91. And in that moment, if only for that moment, we were right where we were supposed to be.
Sarah Dessen
#92. But 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. You know?
Sarah Dessen
#93. Life has a way of disregarding even your best intentions.
Sarah Dessen
#94. Nothing happens for ages, and then all the changes come at once.
Sarah Dessen
#95. You know, when it works, love is amazing. It's not overrated.
Sarah Dessen
#96. I think she loves him," Lissa said. "And love is needing someone.
Love is putting up with someone's
bad qualities because they somehow complete you."
"Love is an excuse to put up with shit that you shouldn't," I replied,
Sarah Dessen
#97. 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.
Sarah Dessen
#98. Their words, like the music, had the potential to be endless.
Sarah Dessen
#99. There's just something obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.
Sarah Dessen
#100. I think my biggest problem, though, at least in drafts, is not repeating myself. After eight books I get worried that a character or piece of dialog might be too much like something I've already done. So it's a challenge to keep it fresh.
Sarah Dessen
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
