Sarah Dessen - Just Listen (2006)

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Only a real asshole takes liberties with someone else's car stereo. That's serious.

Sarah Dessen
This was how I was dealing with everyone and everything lately, taking the good when it came, and the bad the same way, knowing each would pass in its own time.

Sarah Dessen
I don't lie." "You don't lie," I repeated. "That's what I said." "Ever." "Nope." Sure you don't, I thought.

Sarah Dessen
Whether it was a song, a person, or a story, there was a lot you couldn't know from just an excerpt, a glance, or part of a chorus.

Sarah Dessen
She knew I could tell with one glance, one look, one simple instant. It was her eyes. Despite the thick makeup, they were still dark-rimmed., haunted, and sad. Most of all though, they were familiar. The fact that we were in front of hundreds of strangers changed nothing at all. I'd spent a summer with those same eyes-scared, lost, confused-staring back at me. I would have known them anywhere.

Sarah Dessen
It is kind of hard to hold a lot in. But for me… it's sometimes even harder to let it out.

Sarah Dessen
I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered.

Sarah Dessen
It was becoming clear to me that I shouldn't bother to get too attached to anything. Turn your back and you lose it. Just like that.

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
I was beginning to see, though, that the unknown wasn't always the greatest thing to fear. The people who know you best can be risker, because the words they say and things they think have the potential to be not only scary but true, as well.

Sarah Dessen
I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.

Sarah Dessen
If you could just be nice, then you wouldn't have to worry about arguments at all. but being nice wasn't as easy as it seemed, especially when the rest of the world could be so mean.

Sarah Dessen
But you could also look at it the other way. Like you're saying no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.

Sarah Dessen
I was so scared about being discovered, but nobody came. Nobody heard. In my own ears, though, my sobs sounded primal and scary, like something I would have turned off if I'd been able to.

Sarah Dessen
All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough by to shoulder the rest.

Sarah Dessen
So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story.

Sarah Dessen
How it seemed like you could see everything, but certain things were blocked out, hidden.

Sarah Dessen
If you were dead," Owen told her, "you'd have bigger problems than what you were wearing.

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
Instead, we just sat there, together but really apart, watching a show about a stranger and all her secrets, while keeping our own to ourselves, as always.

Sarah Dessen
But there was something I liked about the idea of those seeds buried so deep having at least a chance to emerge

Sarah Dessen
Even if you couldn't see it beneath the surface, molecules were bonding, energy pushing up slowly, as something worked do hare, all alone to grow.

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
I wanted to tell him so. Find the right words, string them together in the ideal way, knowing that here they would have the best chance of sounding perfect.

Sarah Dessen
Look at it this way: I might be saying you're fat, but at least I'm not punching you in the face.' Are those the only options?' Not always. Just sometimes.

Sarah Dessen
This is personal, she'd said. Real. This moment was too, even if you couldn't see it at first glance. It was fake on the outside, but so true within. You only had to look, really look to tell.

Sarah Dessen
Everything hurt. I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to the street, and waited. What for, I didn't know. To be rescued. Or found. But no one came. All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.

Sarah Dessen
So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out – out of earshot, out of the house – even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.

Sarah Dessen
There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your heart.

Sarah Dessen