Sarah Dessen: Likeness (page 2)

“Looking back, it seemed like it should have been harder to lose someone, or have them lose you, especially when they were in the same state, only a few towns over.”

“That's not a real answer.'
Says who?'
Says me. I mean real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence.'
Clowns.”

“It was like that part of my life, was just gone. It was almost too easy, for something I once thought had meant everything.”

“It was like discovering that some part of you wasn't yours at all. And it made me wonder what else I couldn't claim.”

“Their words, like the music, had the potential to be endless.”

“So he didn't have to prove how he felt about me. Like so much else, I should just know.”

“It's true. It's like the hidden secret that no one tells you. we can all be beautiful girls, Colie. it's so easy. it's like Dorothy clicking her heels to go home. You could do it all along.”

“Then what are you like, Annabel?" he shot back. "A liar, like you told me that first day? Come on. That was the biggest lie of all.”

“That was the thing about being on the inside: the world was just going on, even when it seemed like time for you had stopped for good.”

“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.”

“Harder to get in than out, like so little else.”

“Like I, of all people, didn't know better than to lead a total stranger to the point where they could hurt me most, knowing how easily they'd be able to find their way back to it.”

“Your actions is like a raindrop; it falls into the pond making ripples and then its over…”

“When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a coloring book, with the inside not yet completed. All the standard features were there. but the colors, the zigzags and plaids, the bits and pieces that made up me, Halley, weren't yet in place. Scarlett's vibrant reds and golds helped some, but I was still waiting.”

“When he stopped walking and kissed me a few minutes later, it was like time had stopped, with the air, my heart, and the world all so still. And it was this I remembered every other time I was with Marshall.”

“I had this wild thought that he was the only one in all this chaos who was just like me, and that was comforting and profound all at once.”

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

“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.”

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