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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

“…You don’t want the best of times to be just one thing, forever. You have to have a lot of bests of times, each one topping the last. You know?”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

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

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

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

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

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

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

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

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“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.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Variant: 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.
Source: Lock and Key

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

Sarah Dessen book Keeping the Moon

Source: Keeping the Moon

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Variant: 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.
Source: Just Listen

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

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“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”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Dreamland (2000)
Source: Wir sehen uns im Traumland

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“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”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Variant: 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.
Source: Lock and Key

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

Sarah Dessen

Source: Someone Like You

“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?”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“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.”

Sarah Dessen

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“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.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

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

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Variant: because 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.
Source: Just Listen

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

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“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.”

Sarah Dessen

Source: Saint Anything

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

Sarah Dessen

Source: Someone Like You

“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.”

Sarah Dessen

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland

“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”

Sarah Dessen book That Summer

Source: That Summer (1996)

“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?”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

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

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

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

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

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

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

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

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

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

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

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

Sarah Dessen

Source: Saint Anything

“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.”

Sarah Dessen

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

“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.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen