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Sarah Dessen Quotes
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Sarah Dessen is an American novelist who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

✵ 6. June 1970
Sarah Dessen photo
Sarah Dessen: 511 quotes15 likes

Sarah Dessen Quotes

“The thing is, you can’t always have the best of everything. Because for a life to be real, you need it all: good and bad, beach and concrete, the familiar and the unknown, big talkers and small towns.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

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

Sarah Dessen book Keeping the Moon

Source: Keeping the Moon

“We both know the limits of this relationship. It's understood. And as long as we're both comfortablewith that, nobody get's hurt. It's basic.'
~Oliva, pg 374”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“It all counts,' Adam said again. 'And 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.-pg 325 Along for the Ride”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“It doesn't matter, anyway, why you like me. Just that you do.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“Wake up, Caitlin, Mr. Lensing had said. But what he didn't under­stand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids. I didn't care if they sang to me. All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again, pulling me upward into light, to drown.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

“Macon: “It’s true. And if that doesn’t work, use the Jedi Mind Trick. But only if you really have to.”
Halley: “The what?”
Macon: “The Jedi Mind Trick.” He looked at me. “Didn’t you ever see Star Wars?”

Sarah Dessen

Source: Someone Like You

“It was unrealistic to expect to be constantly in the happiest place. In real life, you're lucky just to be always somewhere nearby.”

Sarah Dessen

Source: Saint Anything

“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 book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

“Your mother won a special reward," she told me, "because everyone had a head in her pictures. We all applauded.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland

“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 book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“You get what you give, but also what you're willing to take. The night before, I'd offered up my hand. Now, if I held on, there was no telling what it was possible to recieve in return.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“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

Source: Saint Anything

“call it chicken salad”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Variant: Call it crazy, or just chicken salad.
Source: Along for the Ride

“I wondered again why the right thing always seemed to be met with so much resistance, when you'd think it would be the easier path. You had to fight to be virtuous…”

Sarah Dessen

Source: Someone Like You (1998)

“This is a 911? You know you only text that when someone is dead or dying. You scared the crap out of me.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“I am still the center sister. But I see it differently now. There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“Life is full of screwups," he said, chucking another paper at the split-level before taking the corner. "You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existence.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“You know," I told him,"if you don't know how to eat a cupcake, that's nothing to be ashamed of."
Now he did smile. "I know how to eat a cupcake."
"Sure you do."
"I do," he said. "I just don't want one of those."
"Yeah? Prove it.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“It takes so little to change everything. If you really thought about it, it would scare you to death.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

“And I felt a sudden whirl in my head, knowing this leap was inevitable, that I wasn't just standing on the cliff, toes poking over, but already in mid-air.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“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 book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“You don't have to make things harder then they have to be just to prove a point.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“It is kind of hard to hold a lot in. But for me… it’s sometimes even harder to let it out.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“He wasn't what I'd thought he was; maybe he never had been. I wasn't what I'd thought I was, either.”

Sarah Dessen

Source: Someone Like You

“See you in dreamland.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

“It was a weird kind of loneliness, feeling that some of my closest friends didn’t actually know I existed.”

Sarah Dessen

Source: Saint Anything

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is ialways the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer (1996)
Context: Maybe not, she said as we came to the car. But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.

“Look at it this way: I might be saying you're fat, but at least I'm not punching you in the face.'
Are those the only options?'
Not always. Just sometimes.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“Like it takes so little not only to change something, but to make you forget the way it once was, as well.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“nothing is guaranteed…. So don't be afraid. Be alive.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“But risk is just part of relationships. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“I waited. Because with Eli, he was never trying to get you to finish for him. He always knew where he was going, even if it took a little while to get there.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“Maybe marriage, like life, isn't only about the big moments, whether they be good or bad. Maybe it's all the small things—like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day—that stretches out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“What was the name of Pygmalion's sister?”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

“Odd how it was so easy for a stranger to assume such familiarity. Especially when those who were supposed to know you best often didn't, not at all.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

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

Sarah Dessen book Keeping the Moon

Source: Keeping the Moon

“It was becoming clear to me that I shouldn't bother to get too attached to anything. Turn your back and you lose it. Just like that.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

“But you only get so many do-overs in this life, so many chances to, if not change your past, alter your future.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

“And the rest is history,' I said.
Nah.' He shook his head. 'The rest is now.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“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 book Just Listen

Variant: There’s a real bonding in someone beating the crap out of you. - Rolly
Source: Just Listen

“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

Source: Saint Anything

“She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)