Sarah Dessen: Want

“It's a big deal when you finally get the chance to do the one thing you want to do -need to do- more than anything. It can kind of scare the crap out of you.”

“All I'd ever wanted was to forget. but even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below.”

“What you have to decide… is how you want your life to be. If your forever was ending tomorrow, would this be how you'd want to have spent it? Listen, the truth is, nothing is guaranteed. You know that more than anybody. So dont be afraid. Be alive.”

“Sometimes, we just have to be happy with what people can offer us. Even if it's not what we want, at least it's something.”

“If this was my forever, I wouldn't want to spend it here.”

“But that was the problem with having the answers. It was only after you gave them that you realized they sometimes weren't what people wanted to hear.”

“I just don't know," I said, my voice sounding bumby, not like mine, "how do you help someone who doesn't want your help. What do you do when you can't do anything?”

“This is exactly what i wanted, as commitments had never really been my thing. And it wasn't like it was hard, either. The only trick was never giving more than you were willing to lose.”

“Right now, though, I wanted not to think forward or backward, but only to lose myself in the words.”

“You want to take me to a movie?" I asked.
"Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off.”

“The truth was, I wasn't sure. But I wanted to keep believing people could change, and it was certainly easier to do so when you were in the midst of it.”

“Wes wants to be with Macy. And Macy, whether she'll admit it or not, wants to be with Wes. And yet they're not together, which is not only unjust, but when you think about it, tragical!”

“It was so weird, because usually I was totally nervous talking to guys. But Eli was different. He made me want to say more, not less. Which was maybe not a good thing.”

“Life is long. Just because you don't get your chance right when you want or expect it doesn't mean it won't come. Fate doesn't punch a time clock or consult a schedule.”

“Everything hurt. I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to the street, and waited. What for, I didn't know. To be rescued. Or found. But no one came. All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.”

“It took a lot of work to be perfect. If you didn’t want to break a sweat, there was no point in even bothering.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”