Sarah Dessen Quotes

447 Sourced Quotes

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

Sarah Dessen
See for me, it's immediate. Silence is so freaking loud.' This seemed either deep or deeply oxymoronic. I wasn't sure which.

Sarah Dessen
Like a blinking cursor on an empty page, it was just the first thing. The beginning of the beginning. But at least it was done.

Sarah Dessen
It didn't make you noble to step away from something that wasn't working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.

Sarah Dessen
Oh darling, don't be bitter. It's the first instinct of the weak.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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
Who knew three dots could make such a difference? Like everything else, a love or a wish or whatever, it was all in the way you read it.

Sarah Dessen
It's okay to accept things from people. It doesn't make you weak or helpless.

Sarah Dessen
Okay. Enough." I got out of the closet, brushing myself off, then turned around to face her. "This is happening. So you need to go downstairs, face your fears, and make the best of it, and everything will be okay." She narrowed her eyes at me. "When did you suddenly become so positive?" "Just get out of there.

Sarah Dessen
As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.

Sarah Dessen