Sarah Dessen Quotes

447 Sourced Quotes

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.

Sarah Dessen
D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Austin... and you. I'll be there soon.

Sarah Dessen
I got back in my car, starting the engine, then drove off. It wasn't until I pulled onto the highway that it all really sunk it, how temporary our friendship had been. We'd been on our breaks, after all, but it wasn't our relationships that were on pause: it was us. Now we were both in motion again, moving ahead. So what if there were questions left unanswered. Life went on. We knew that better than anyone.

Sarah Dessen
We didn't talk about our scars, the ones you could see and the ones you couldn't.

Sarah Dessen
All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.

Sarah Dessen
All I'd wanted for so long was for someone to explain everything that had happened to me in this same way. To label it neatly on a page: this leads to this leads to this.

Sarah Dessen
What," I said, "is that a crime here or something? Like only buying one thing at the Gas/Gro?

Sarah Dessen
So what do you wear to dump somebody?" she asked me, twirling a lock of hair around one finger. "Black, for mourning? Or something cheerful and colorful, to distract them from their pain? Or maybe you wear some sort of camouflage, something that will help you disappear quickly in case they don't take it well.

Sarah Dessen
There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn't sure I had it in me to keep looking back.

Sarah Dessen
And no relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater.

Sarah Dessen
But the bottom line is that, as humans, we are by nature selfish creatures. The only way we care about anything, really, is by making it about us.

Sarah Dessen
Events conspired to bring you back to where you'd been. It was what you did then that made all the difference: it was all about potential.

Sarah Dessen
Sometimes. It was a good escape. Until, you know, it wasn‟t.

Sarah Dessen
As he heard me approach, he quickly leaped up, grabbing a nearby loaf of bread and holding it in front of him as if struck by a sudden desire to make a sandwich.

Sarah Dessen
After the group vet appointment—during which Lyle scratched the vet, the vet tech, and some poor woman minding her own business in the waiting room—we went back to Sabrina's and re-released the cats to their natural habitat.

Sarah Dessen
But God! Who could live like this, anyway, with the kind of guesswork that was enough to make a person crazy, just sailing along, taking bumps here and there, no course navigated whatsoever, with any big wave capable of just tipping and sinking you entirely. IT was madness, stipidity, and- (then I saw him)

Sarah Dessen
It wasn't like I was some expert on the meaning of being supportive. Was it being loyal even against your better judgement? Or, like Olivia, was it making your displeasure known from the start, even when someone didn't want to hear it?

Sarah Dessen
Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn't make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you're doing it out of fear.

Sarah Dessen
This is what daughters did. They left, and came home later with lives of their own.

Sarah Dessen
The worst thing you can do if you miss or need someone is let them know it.

Sarah Dessen
It was like those songs I'd heard as a child, each so familiar, and all mine. When i got older and realized the words were sad, the stories tragic, it didn't make me love them any less. By then they were already part of me, woven into my conciousness & memory

Sarah Dessen
Everything always gets crazy at the end. You just have to keep going, regardless of how awful it gets. So that's what I do.

Sarah Dessen
But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn't find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.

Sarah Dessen
Call it crazy, or just chicken salad. But within reason, or without it i was in it too.

Sarah Dessen
We can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.

Sarah Dessen
For two hours I'd felt myself stretching tighter and tighter, like a rubber band pulled to the point of snapping. And now, I could feel the smaller, weaker part of myself beginning to fray, tiny bits giving way before the big break.

Sarah Dessen
Her life was perfect. But as was often the case, the rest of us were still adjusting.

Sarah Dessen
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.

Sarah Dessen
It shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder―or impossible―to lose.

Sarah Dessen
Because the truth sometimes hurts," I said. Yeah," he said. "So do lies, though.

Sarah Dessen