Sarah Dessen Quotes

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

“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”

“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”

“The only trick was never giving more that you were willing to lose.”

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

“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.”

“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?”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“call it chicken salad”

“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…”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“That’s the thing, though. You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.”

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

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

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

“See you in dreamland.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“You really get to meet people on such a personal level. There's a real bonding in someone beating the crap out of you.”

“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.”

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