Sarah Dessen - Time Quotes

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It wasn't until Kiffney-Brown, when I met Jason Talbot, that I really thought I might actually have one of those boyfriend kind of stories to tell the next time I got together with my old friends. Jason was smart, good-looking, and seriously on the rebound after his girlfriend at Jackson dumped him for, in his words, 'a juvenile delinquent welder with a tattoo'.

Sarah Dessen
Then I'd crawl back into bed, smelling her all around me, and tell myself that next time, I would lock that window. But I never did.

Sarah Dessen
I thought of all the times we'd been together, how I kept coming closer, then retreating, while he stayed right where he was. A constant in a world where few, if any, really existed.

Sarah Dessen
Because maybe, the best of times were yet to come. You never knew.

Sarah Dessen
The past did affect the present and the future, in ways you could see and a million ones you couldn't. Time wasn't a thing you could divide easily; there was no defined middle or beginning or end. I could pretend to leave the past behind, but it would not leave me.

Sarah Dessen
Because you have to just go with the flow. Your life is not your own, with people coming in and out all the time. You get mellow because you have to.

Sarah Dessen
Once, this had been the life I'd wanted. Even chosen. Now, though, I couldn't believe that there had been a time when this kind of monotony and silence, this most narrow of existences, had been preferable. Then again, once, I'd never known anything else.

Sarah Dessen
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
You don't want the best of times to be just one thing, forever. You have to have a lot of bests of times, each one topping the last. You know?

Sarah Dessen
But I think, personally, that it would be worse to have been alone all that time. Sure, maybe I would have protected my heart from some things, but would that really have been better? To hold myself apart because I was too scared that something might no be forever?

Sarah Dessen
So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop them in midstream. But it was even worse when you knew in that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldn't even budge.

Sarah Dessen
When he stopped walking and kissed me a few minutes later, it was like time had stopped, with the air, my heart, and the world all so still. And it was this I remembered every other time I was with Marshall.

Sarah Dessen
I knew that it wouldn't last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place.

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

Sarah Dessen
Sometimes, you get things right the first time. Others, the second. But the third time, they say, is the charm.

Sarah Dessen
At the same time, though, I was beginning to wonder if this was just how it was supposed to be for me, like perhaps I wasn't capable of having that many people in my life at any one time. My mom turned up, Nate walked away, one door opening as another clicked shut.

Sarah Dessen
The bottom line is, what defines you isn't how many times you crash, but the number of times you get back on the bike. As long as it's one more. you're all good.

Sarah Dessen
This thought was interrupted, suddenly, by a crash from the front entrance. We all looked over just in time to see Adam bending back from the glass, rubbing his arm. "Pull open," Maggie called out. As Leah rolled her eyes, she said, "He never remembers. It's so weird.

Sarah Dessen
I was running from one problem or place to another, with no time left to study, or sleep, or just breathe. I felt pulled in all directions, fighting to keep all these obligations circling in the air above me. It was only a matter of time before something fell.

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
I understood now. This voice, the one that had been trying to get my attention all this time, calling out to me, begging me to hear it — it wan't Will's. It was mine.

Sarah Dessen
Sitting there with them, it was almost hard to remember when I first came to Perkins, so determined to remember to be a one-woman operation to the end. But that was the thing about taking help and giving it, or so I was learning; there was no such thing as really getting even. Instead, this connection, once opened, remained ongoing over time.

Sarah Dessen
Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.

Sarah Dessen
Like a word on a page that you've printed and read a million times, that suddenly looks strange or wrong, foreign. And you feel scared for a second, like you've lost something, even if you're not sure what it is.

Sarah Dessen
The further you go, the more you have to be proud of. At the same time, in order to come a long way, you have to be behind to begin with. IN the end, though maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.

Sarah Dessen