Sarah Dessen Quotes

I just have to be super strong when it comes to my work time. Shut the browser, ignore the email alerts, and just WRITE.

I'm really interested in the idea of anomynity and familiarity. And sunglasses, you know, are so indicatitve of that. I mean, they're worn by some people to hide themselves. But they're also a fashion statement, meant to be noticed. So there's a dichotomy there.

We didn't talk about our scars, the ones you could see and the ones you couldn't.

But for now, I just sat there on the bed and listened to my song. The one that had been written for me by a man who knew me not at all, now sung by the one who knew me best.

Every book teaches me something about my process, and they are all challenging in one way or another.

"So you're always honest," I said. "Aren't you?" "No," I told him. "I'm not." "Well, that's good to know, I guess." "I'm not saying I'm a liar," I told him. He raised his eyebrows. "That's not how I meant it, anyways." "How'd you mean it, then?" "I just...I don't always say what I feel." "Why not?" "Because the truth sometimes hurts," I said. "Yeah," he said. "So do lies, though."

But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn't find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.

From up above, in a plane passing over, you’d just see one little light in all this dark, with no idea of the lives that were being lived within it, and in the house beside, and beside that one. So much happening in the world, night and day, hour by hour. It was no wonder we were meant to sleep, if only to check out of it for a little while.

In Anger Management,' he said,'we had to do all this role-playing stuff. You know, to get used to handling things in a less volatile way.' 'You role-played,' I said, trying to picture this. 'I had to. It was court-ordered.

I jammed my hand in my jacket pocket, bracing myself fo the next hit, and fel something. Something grainy and samll, sticking to the tips of my fingers: the sand from Commons Park. Oh Cass, I thought. I miss you so, so much.

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.

Sometimes, you get things right the first time. Others, the second. But the third time, they say, is the charm.

My point is you're different here. Hollis I've only been here for a month. A lot can happen in a month he replied. Shoot in two weeks I met my future wife changed my entire life's trajectory and bought my first tie. You bought a tie I asked. Because honestly this was the most shocking part.

It was always late at night, when everything and everyone else was quiet, that those voices would rise like ghosts, soft and haunting, filling your mind until sleep finally came.

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

True friendship is a promise you keep forever.

What you need, what you deserve, is a guy who adores you for what you are. Who doesn't see you as a project, but a prize. you know?

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.

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.

After the group vet appointment--during which Lyle scratched the vet, the vet tech, and some poor woman minding her own business in the waiting room--we went back to Sabrina's and re-released the cats to their natural habitat.

There was nothing, nothing to depend on. And why was I surprised?

If you didn't always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it's enough - more than enough, even - just to be there.

Stop it. Seriously. This isn't funny.' 'You're right.' A pause. 'It's pathetic.

It didn't make you noble to step away from something that wasn't working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.

There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.

I was so thrilled that I was having a girl, because I just am so girly myself, but I think the teenage years are going to be very interesting.

There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can ever truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.

I think when you're a beginning author with any publishing company, there's only so much they can put behind you.

Everyone laughed, and just like that, the conversation shifted, jumping to another topic. It was fast and furious, the talking, the emotions, the back-and-forth and forth-and-back. I realized that if I tried to focus on it too much, I got overwhelmed. So I just decided to relax into it, bumpy and crazy as it might be, and try for once to just go along for the ride.

As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.

Whenever you made a choice, especially one you'd been resisting, it always affected everything else, some in big ways, like a tremor beneath your feet, others in so tiny a shift you hardly noticed a change at all. But it was happening.

Who would have thought that grieving an old relationship and enjoying a new one could happen simultaneously, in parallel? Yet another thing you only find out once it's happening to you.

I think the most important thing is just to write. It sounds so simple, but sometimes it's not. You can get so distracted - -by having to work other jobs, or what other people have to say about your writing - -but the one thing that really matters is that you just keep going, especially when you're working on a novel. It's so easy to get discouraged and give up.

He just stood there, looking at me, as if I had actually changed before his eyes. But this was the girl I'd been all along. I'd just hidden her well.

If things don't work out the way you want, hold your head up high and be proud. And try again. And again. And again!

Sitting there with them, it was almost hard to remember when I first came to Perkins, so determined to remember to be a one-woman operation to the end. But that was the thing about taking help and giving it, or so I was learning; there was no such thing as really getting even. Instead, this connection, once opened, remained ongoing over time.

How it felt to have the world moving beneath me, a hand gripping mine, knowing if I fell, at least I wouldn't do it alone.

When I was in high school, I was always really envious of those girls who seemed to have everything: the perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect boyfriend, perfect life. It wasn't until I was older that I realized that nobody's life is perfect, and that those girls probably had a lot of the same problems I did.

People get mad Annabel. Its not the end of the world.

Despite our differences, we did have a history. No one understood where I was coming from the way he did.

Teenagers are a great audience and they are fearless about asking what they want to know.

As far as I was concerned, we'd come to a draw: I hadn't wanted to come, and she didn't want me to leave. We were even. But I knew my mother wouldn't see it that way. Lately, we didn't seem to see anything the same.

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.

talk was cheap and useless. Action was what mattered. And me, I was moving. Now, again, always.

You know, when you think about it, that’s kind of a weird thing. I mean it’s meant to be sympathetic, right? But it’s kind of not. Like you’re telling the person there’s nothing unique about what they’re saying I considered this as a couple of kids on Rollerblades whizzed past, hockey sticks over their shoulders. “Yeah,” I said, finally, “but you could also look at it the other way. Like no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.

She tried to be someone people liked. She tried to be someone people disliked. But all I became was someone who didn't succeed with anything I tried to be.

Conciseness is underrated

Self respect, Colie. If you don't have it, the world will walk all over you.