Sarah Dessen Quotes

I never really know what I'm going to write next until it comes to me. So we'll just have to see what happens.

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.

...You can't unlearn something, even if you want to. You know what you know.

It's not always easy being her daughter.' I think,' she said, 'sometimes it's hard no matter whose daughter you are.

Once I turned eighteen, I could cut myself off from everyone and finally get what I wanted, which was to be on my own, once and for all. ~Ruby, pg 38

Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.

I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own. Maybe you would feel lost in the crowd. Or sheltered by it. Whatever the case, one things was for sure: like it or not, you'd never be alone.

When you don't know where you're going, maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to have more than you need.

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.

I have to admit, an unrequited love is so much better than a real one. I mean, it's perfect... As long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.

With love like that, you can't get pick about how it finds you or the details. All that matters is that it's there. Better late than never.

With my mom, when someone was gone, they were gone. She didn't waste another minute thinking about them, and neither should you.

My books are so tame!

Life has a way of disregarding even your best intentions.

its been a long night" "aren't they all?

Remy: Did you really believe, that first day, that we were meant to be together? Dexter: You're here, aren't you?

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed there, regardless.

But anyone can begin. It was the part with all the promise, the potential, the things I loved. More and more, though, I was finding myself wanting to find out what happened in the end.

It's funny how two people can grow up in the same town, go to the same school, have the same friends, and end up so totally different. Family, or lack of it, counts for more than you'd think.

I'd still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real.

Get back on that bike.

We were willing to do so much for the people we loved, even if it meant hurting ourselves. Maybe that, in the end, was what love- all kinds- was really about.

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

Sometimes. It was a good escape. Until, you know, it wasn‟t.

Even if you do make tons of new friends,” I told him, “try not to forget where you came from, okay?

Sometimes it seems safer to hold it all in, where the only person who can judge is yourself.

Times like this it did seem real I was leaving, and even more that my family, and this life, would go on without me. And again I felt that emptiness rise up, but pushed it away. Still, I lingered there, in the doorway, memorizing the noise. The moment. Tucking it away out of sight, to be remembered when I needed it most.

Some people, they can't just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me... I don't know. I didn't want to fix it, to forget. It wasn't something that was broken. It's just...something that happened. And like that hole, I'm just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remembering and getting on at the same time.

Everything, in the end, comes down to timing. One second, one minute, one hour could make all the difference.

Maybe" she said. "I just wish we'd have a little mishap.It would be reassuring

The basic fact is that no, this isn't ideal. Very few things are. Sometimes, you have to manufacture your own history. Give fate a push,so to speak.

It wasn't about being happy or unhappy. I just didn't want to be me anymore.

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.

As if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.

It's so easy to get caught up in what people expect of you. Sometimes, you can just lose yourself.

I was actually pretty miserable in high school. I couldn't wait for it to be over. And when it finally was, I remember sitting at graduation with all these classmates getting nostalgic and emotional already and all I could think was, "Get me out of here. I never want to see you people again." So it's ironic that I spend half my day putting myself back there by choice [while writing].

Looking at the pond, all I could think was that it is an incredivle thing, how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all.

When he first put his arms around me, it was tentative, like maybe he expected I'd pull away. When I didn't, he moved in closer, his hands smoothing over my shoulders, and in my mind I saw myself retreating a million times when people tried to do this same thing: my sister or my mother, pulling back and into myself, tucking everything out of sight, where only I knew where to find it. This time, though, I gave in. I let Wes pull me against him, pressing my head against his chest, where I could feel his heart beating, steady and true.

I write thank-you notes the minute I throw the wrapping paper away.

There was no way to take the story back, folding it neatly into the place I'd kept it all this time. No matter what else happened, from here on out, I would always remember Wes, because with this telling, he'd become part of that story, of my story, too.

And that was it; it was so easy for her. My own memories did not even belong to me. But I knew she was wrong. I had seen that comet. I knew it as well as I knew my own face, my own hands. My own heart.

"Which is completely out-of-line behavior. Then you are wholly within your rights to stomp on their foot." "No," Delia said, over her shoulder. "Actually, you're not. Just excuse yourself as politely as possible, and get out of arm's reach." Kristy looked at me, shaking her head. "Stomp them." she said, under her breath. "Really."

I've seen what commitment leads to. Going in is the easy part. It's the ending that sucks! -Remy

Sometimes love can be an ugly thing.

So maybe it wasn't the fairy tale. But those stories weren't real anyway. Mine were.

In the end, though, maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.

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.

Mayonnaise is a lot like men, it can make everything much better, adding flavor and ease to your life. Or, it can just be sticky and gross and make you nauseous"- "Keeping the Moon