Sarah Dessen Quotes

page 7

“But the bottom line is that, as humans, we are by nature selfish creatures. The only way we care about anything, really, is by making it about us.”

“I mean, to me, freaking out is different. More of a running away, not telling anyone what's wrong, slowly simmering until you burst kind of thing.”

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

“And while it is hard enough to take away something that makes a person happy it's even more difficult when it seems like it's the only thing.”

“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.”

“Maybe we were all destined to just keep doing the same stupid things, over and over again, never really learning a single thing.”

“But as long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.”

“The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, "is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life.”

“Watching them, I thought again of how we can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.”

“Because it is so hard, in any life, to believe in what you can’t fully understand.”

“This was how I was dealing with everyone and everything lately, taking the good when it came, and the bad the same way, knowing each would pass in its own time.”

“It's not always so simple, Haven. Sometimes there isn't a good guy and a bad guy. Sometimes even the ones you want to believe turn out to be liars.”

“Welcome to adulthood," she said. "It sucks as much as high school.”

“There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.”

“This true difference in me now: I had these experiances, these tales, more of this life. So maybe it wasn't the fairy tale. But those stories weren't real anyway. Mine were.”

“If someone is really close with you, your getting upset or them getting upset is okay, and they don’t change because of it. It’s just part of the relationship. It happens. You deal with it.”

“But as i lay there, it only seemes like silence filling my ears. And the thing was, it was so freaking loud.”

“Forever [is] so many different things. It is always changing… it is twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wish would last and last”

“She can be anything, Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. And so can you.”

“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.”

“But now, I was beginning to wonder 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.
~Ruby, pg 399”

“If you have just one person believe in you, you'll always find your way”

“Well," I said finally, knowing he was waiting, "you make me laugh."
He nodded. "And?"
"You're pretty good-looking."
"Pretty good-looking? I called you beautiful."
"You want to be beautiful?" I asked him.
"Are you saying I'm not?”

“Family isnt about blood relationships, its about the meaning behind them. I relize now that sharing chromosoms is not the only way to having a family, its about the friendship behind it.”

“Maybe, you just misplaced it, you know? It's been there. But you just haven't been looking in the right spot. Because lost means forever, it's gone. But misplaced… that means it's still around, somewhere. Just not where you thought.”

“But you don’t have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.”
“You don’t have to assume the worst about everyone, either. The world isn’t always out to get you.”

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

“a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment. Which is pretty amazing, when you actually think about it.”

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

“When you have lost hope, you lost everything. And when you think all is lost, when all is dire and bleak, there is always hope.”

“Nothing had been okay, not for a long time. And every moment that I thought I was getting close, like the one I’d had earlier, seemed to remind the universe that I didn’t deserve that, not yet.”

“Just like that, with one phone call, she was a daughter again.”

“As I rolled over, stretching out, my only thought was to go back to the dream I'd been having, which I couldn't remember, other than that it had been good, in that distant, hopeful way unreal things can be.”

“All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind.”

“My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest. page 40000”

“You want me to give her a key?" the guy asked.
"I want you to give her a possibility," she told him, looking at my necklace again. "And that's what a key represents. An open door, a chance. You know?”

“Whether it was a song, a person, or a story, there was a lot you couldn’t know from just an excerpt, a glance, or part of a chorus.”

“It's always very pure, that last moment before an ugly, unsettling truth hits someone. The most stark of before-and-afters.”

“D. C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Austin… and you. I'll be there soon.”

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

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

“If he'd been any other boy, and this was any other world, I would have kissed him. Nothing could have stopped me.”

“If you don't pay attention to the past, you'll never understand the future. It's all linked together.”

“He had a nice smile. Seeing it, I felt like I’d won a prize, because he was so sparing with them.”

“For any of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred of years from now. You can never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count.”

“It was such a weird thing how a breakup stretched much wider than you expected. You didn't just lose a person, but their entire world as well.”

“You knew the truth all along, Colie. That's all matters. You knew.”

“How weird that must be, to stay the same as everyone else changes.”

“Time wasn't a thing you could divide easily; there was no defined middle or beginning or end. I could pretend to leave the past behind, but it would not leave me.”