Sarah Dessen Quotes

447 Sourced Quotes

It was so easy to disown what you couldn't recognize, to keep yourself apart from things that were foreign and unsettling. The only person you can be sure to control, always, is yourself. Which is a lot to be sure of, but at the same time, not enough.

Sarah Dessen
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
Really? Screaming? He shrugged. It wasn't that bad. But there were definitely some freak-outs on both sides. Though, to be honest, the silence was worse. Worse than screaming? I said. Much, he said, nodding. I mean, at least with an argument, you know what's happening. Or have some idea. Silence is… it could be anything. It's just – So freaking loud, I finished for him. He pointed at me. Exactly.

Sarah Dessen
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.

Sarah Dessen
Like so many before them, they didn't care that my dad was only the messenger. They still wanted to shoot him.

Sarah Dessen
Now I felt like I was drifting, sucked down by an undertow, and too far out to swim back to the shore.

Sarah Dessen
It's a choice, Annabel. And if you make the wrong one, you have only yourself to blame when there are consequences.

Sarah Dessen
If something doesn't work exactly right, or maybe needs some special treatment, you don't just throw it away. Everything can't be fully operational all the time. Sometimes, we need to have the patience to give something the little nudge it needs.

Sarah Dessen
Love is so unpredictable. Sometimes you'll know a man for years and then one day, boom! Suddenly you see him in a different way. And other times, it's that first date, that first moment. That's what makes it so great.

Sarah Dessen
Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that. It's a lie. It's just something that people say they'll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said 'friendly' relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it's like breaking up all over again. But messier.

Sarah Dessen
Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.

Sarah Dessen
Maybe it was true, and being a girl could be about interest rates and skinny jeans, riding bikes and wearing pink. Not about any one thing, but everything.

Sarah Dessen
It was hard to remember what the yard had looked like even twelve hours before, undisturbed and pristine. Like it takes so little to change something, but to make you forget the way it once was, as well.

Sarah Dessen
I'd been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.

Sarah Dessen
I had to wonder whether it was possible that this wasn't already decided for me, and if maybe, just maybe, this was my one last chance to try and prove it. There was no way to know. There never is. But I reached out and took it anyway.

Sarah Dessen
There's a kind of radar that you get, after years of being talked about and made fun of by other people. You can almost smell it when it's about to happen, can recognize instantly the sound of a hushed voice, lowered just enough to make whatever is said okay. I had only been in Colby for a few weeks. But I had not forgotten.

Sarah Dessen
I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well.

Sarah Dessen
Very quietly, I heard a voice in my ear.It said, in a weird, cheesy, right-out-of-one-of-my-mother's-novels way, Ah. Wemeet again. I turned my head, just slightly, and right there, practically on top of me, was theguy from the car dealership. He was wearing a red Mountain Fresh Detergent T-shirt—not just fresh: mountain fresh!—it proclaimed, and was smiling at me. Oh, God, I said. No, it's Dexter,

Sarah Dessen
I waited. Because with Eli, he was never trying to get you to finish for him. He always knew where he was going, even if it took a little while to get there.

Sarah Dessen
I was bored. Sad. Lonely. It was only a matter of time before I cracked.

Sarah Dessen
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
You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It's not overrated. There's a reason for all those songs.

Sarah Dessen
I wasn't ready for this, but then I probably never would be, and this year, like so much else, wouldn't wait. I had no choice but to get out of my car, with everyone watching and begin in earnest, alone. So I did

Sarah Dessen
Something had changed in me, even if I didn't know what it was just yet. All I could think was that I felt alive for the first time.

Sarah Dessen
Nothing happens for ages, and then all the changes come at once.

Sarah Dessen
The kind who live for music and are constantly seeking it out, anywhere they can. Who can't imagine a life without it. They're enlightened.

Sarah Dessen
I wanted to be somewhere else... Someplace where the sight of me sobbing would tie me to no one and no one to me.

Sarah Dessen