Sarah Dessen Quotes

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?

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

I had no illusions about love anymore. It came, it went, it left casualties or it didn't. People weren't meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say.

I know you guys have some sort of weird thing going on, with that game you play and everything—" "It's called a friendship.

That first love. And the first one who breaks your heart. For me, they just happen to be the same person.

"It's gonna be okay," I said. It was the first time in a long time that I believed it. "It will."

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

I eased back on my elbows, tilting my head back to look up at the sky, which was pinkish, streaked with red. This was the time we knew best, that stretch of day going from dusk to dark. It seemed like we were always waiting for nighttime here. I could feel the trampoline easing up and down, moved by our own breathing, bringing us in small increments up and back from the sky as the colors faded, slowly, and the stars began to show themselves.

I don't get it,' Caroline said, bemused. 'She's the only one with wings. Why is that?' There were so many questions in life. You couldn't ever have all the answers. But I knew this one. It's so she can fly,' I said. Then I started to run.

I knew, in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late: again, I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome. "Okay," he said. He took a breath. "What would you do, if you could do anything?" I took a step toward him, closing the space between us. "This," I said. And then I kissed him.

When you can't save yourself or your heart, it helps to be able to save face.

Like a word on a page that you’ve printed and read a million times, that suddenly looks strange or wrong, foreign. And you feel scared for a second, like you’ve lost something, even if you’re not sure what it is.

I was actually kind of a hot mess in high school. I did a lot of things in high school I'm not proud of. I wasn't a good student and I wasn't particularly a good daughter. I wasn't very engaged.

And to know me, as you have discovered, is to love me.

Listen,"Kristy said," the truth is,nothing is guranteed. You know better than anybody." She looked at me hard,making sure I knew what she meant.I did."So don't be afraid.Be alive.

Why does she have wings?' So she can fly.

My mother has always been the point I calibrated myself against. In knowing where she was, I could always locate myself, as well. These months she'd been gone, I felt like I'd been floating, loose and boundaryless, but now that I knew where she was, I kept waiting for a kind of certainty to kick in. It didn't. Instead, I was more unsure than ever, stuck between this new life and the one I'd left behind.

Okay," I said, "what's your biggest fear?" As always, he took a second to think about the answer. "Clowns," he said. "Clowns." "Yup." I just looked at him. "What?" he said, glancing over at me. "That is not a real answer," I told him. "Says who?" "Says me. I meant a real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence." He thought for a second. "Clowns.

In midair, dangling lost above the world.

Grieving doesn't make you imperfect. It makes you human.

If this was my instinct talking, I didn‟t want to hear what it was saying.

Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn't make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you're doing it out of fear.

Rogerson," I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, "where would I find the pelagic zone?" "In the open sea," he said. "Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints.

Just because something's damaged doesn't mean it shouldn't be treated with respect.' 'Ad,' Wallace said, 'it's a coffee table, not an orphan.

You didn't have to take a punch for me, you know,' he said. 'I'm a lover, not a fighter.' 'You're a freak is what you are,' I said.

She was so emotional, on the verge of tears. This was what I'd wanted to prevent with all those quick disappearances, the tangledness of farewells and all the baggage they brought with them. But now, looking at Deb, I realized what else I'd given up: knowing for sure that someone was going to miss me. What happened to goodbye, Michael in Westcott had written on my Ume.com page. I was pretty sure I knew, now. It had been packed away in a box of its own, trying to be forgotten, until I really needed it. Until now.

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.

But that was the problem with having the answers. It was only after you gave them that you realized they sometimes weren't what people wanted to hear.

I didn't trot my pain out to show around. I kept it better hidden than anyone. I did.

Some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic.

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.

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

A thump thump thump noise that was so unfamiliar, and yet I couldn't quite place it. But I knew it. It was - "Mmm-hmmm," Monica murmured, just as Wes came view into the path. He was running, his pace quick and steady. He was in shorts, his shirt off, staring ahead as he passed. His back was tan and gleaming with sweat.

I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her eyes, downing vodka and sobbing uncontrollably. "We can't heal you at Evergreen", the very somber voiceover said. "But we can help you to heal yourself." It had become our own running joke, applicable to almost anything. "Hey Cass, "I'd say, "hand me that toothpaste." "Caitlin," she'd say, her voice dark and serious. "I can't hand you the toothpaste. But I CAN help you hand the toothpaste to yourself.

If you expect the worst, you'll never be disappointed.

Society. The same society, I might add, that dictates that little girls should always be sugar and spice and everything nice, which encourages them not to be assertive. And that, in turn, then leads to low self-esteem, which can lead to eating disorders and increased tolerance and acceptance of domestic, sexual, and substance abuse." "You get all that from a pink Onesie?" Leah said after a moment.

It's so, so stupid what we do to ourselves because we're afraid. It's so stupid.

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

I walked over, my eyes scanning Luna Blu, my house, and Dave's. But it was the building behind them, that empty hotel, that had the tiniest light, provided by one word, written in fluorescent paint. Maybe it wasn't what was once there, in real life. But in this one, it said it all: STAY.

Doesn't it seem sometimes that the whole world's uphill but at least we know the way back will be easy.

Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine.

Watching him, I thought, not for the first time that night, that maybe it should have felt strange to be with him, here, now. And yet it didn’t, at all. That was one of the things about the night. Stuff that would be weird in the bright light of day just wasn’t so much once you passed a certain hour. It was like the dark just evened it all out somehow.

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

The truth was I knew, after all those flat January days, that I deserved better. I deserved I love yous and kiwi fruits and warriors coming to my door, besotted with love. I deserved pictures of my face in a thousand expressions, and the warmth of a baby's kick beneath my hand. I deserved to grow, and to change, to become all the girls I could be over the course of my life, each one better than the last.

You're not a sucker. You're just nice. You give people the benefit of the doubt.

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.

Events conspired to bring you back to where you'd been. It was what you did then that made all the difference: it was all about potential.

You know, I think I knew you for about three weeks before I ever really saw you smile. And then one day, Morgan said something and you laughed, and I remember thinking it was really cool because it meant something. You're not the kind of person who smiles for nothing, Colie. I have to earn every one.