Sarah Dessen Quotes

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The fate of your heart is your choice and no one else gets a vote

Sarah Dessen
Watching him, I thought, not for the first time that night, that maybe it should have felt strange to be with him, here, now. And yet it didn't, at all. That was one of the things about the night. Stuff that would be weird in the bright light of day just wasn't so much once you passed a certain hour. It was like the dark just evened it all out somehow.

Sarah Dessen
It's still a memory worth having, even if it's not exactly what you imagined.

Sarah Dessen
A lot can change between planning something and actually doing it. But maybe all that really matters is that anything is different at all.

Sarah Dessen
Together, we looked down at the tiny house, the sole thing on this vast, flat surface. Like the only person living on the moon. It could be either lonely or peaceful, depending on how you looked at it. "It's a start," I said.

Sarah Dessen
There was nothing, nothing to depend on. And why was I surprised?

Sarah Dessen
I can say I made a lot of mistakes, but I don't regret things. Because at least I didn't spend a life standing outside, wondering what living would be like.

Sarah Dessen
So I left him there alone to watch history repeat the same events retold again and again on his own.

Sarah Dessen
And that was as far as he got before i heard it. The thumping of footsteps, running up the lawn toward me: It seemed like I could hear it through the grass, like leaning your ear to a railroad track and feeling the train coming, miles away. As the noise got closer I could hear ragged breaths, and then a voice. It was my mother.

Sarah Dessen
Needing was so easy: it came naturally, like breathing. Being needed by someone else, though, that was the hard part. But as with giving help and accepting it, we had to do both to be made complete-like links overlapping to form a chain, or a lock finding the right key.

Sarah Dessen
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.

Sarah Dessen
Talk was cheap and useless. Action was what mattered. And me, I was moving. Now, again, always.

Sarah Dessen
There were so many levels to the unknown, from safe to dangerous to outright nebulous, scariest of all.

Sarah Dessen
The girl in the tight black dress was passing by us now, eyeing Wes and walking entirely too slowly. "Hi," she said, and he nodded at her but didn't reply. Knew it, I thought. Honestly," I said. What?" Come on. You have to admit, it's sort of ridiculous." What is?" Now that I had to define it, I found myself struggling for the right words. "You know," I said, then figured Kristy had really summed it up best. "The sa-woon." The what?

Sarah Dessen
Never would forever, with all its meanings, be so clear and distinct as in the true, guaranteed end of the world.

Sarah Dessen
In a way, I was almost happy to see her. The worst part of me, out in the flesh. Blinking back at me in the dim light, daring me to call her a name other than my own.

Sarah Dessen
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
It wasn't about being happy or unhappy. I just didn't want to be me anymore.

Sarah Dessen
You just looked..." she said, searching for the word, "taken, you know? Plus you hardly reacted to Wes. I mean, you did alittle, but nothing like most girls. It was a little swoon. Not a sa-woon, you know?" I said, "Sa-woon? Oh, come on," she said shaking her head. "Even a blind girl could tell he is amazing.

Sarah Dessen
You can't just turn your heart off like a faucet; you have to go to the source and dry it out, drop by drop.

Sarah Dessen
What were you two talking about?" she whispered as Wes pulls the door shut. Nothing," I said. "Running." You should have seen your face," she said, her breath hot in my ear. "Sa-woooon.

Sarah Dessen
I'd known enough people for every minute of the day, and yet still didn't have anyone as my two a.m.

Sarah Dessen
I spent a lot of time looking at that picture. Wondering what I'd think of that girl, if I was someone else, seeing how easily she sits in her boyfriend's lap, laughing, with his arms around her. I would have thought her life was perfect, the way I once thought Cass's was. It was too easy, I was learning, to just assume things.

Sarah Dessen
You just walk over there and into the office and say, 'Hey, be my prom date,'" he said. "It's that simple.

Sarah Dessen
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.

Sarah Dessen
You can't unlearn something, even if you want to. You know what you know.

Sarah Dessen
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.

Sarah Dessen
Because it is so hard, in any life, to believe in what you can't fully understand.

Sarah Dessen
People don't change. If anything, you get more set in your ways as you get older, not less

Sarah Dessen
I'd been convinced I was on the outside, but really, I'd always been within arm's reach. All I had to do was ask, and I, too, would be easily brought back, surrounded and immersed, finding myself safe, somewhere in between.

Sarah Dessen