Sarah Dessen Quotes

There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.

~ Sarah Dessen

Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you.

~ Sarah Dessen

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...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.

~ 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 like flaws. I think they make things interesting.

~ Sarah Dessen

The fate of your heart is your choice and no one else gets a vote

~ Sarah Dessen

Wherever you will go, I will let you down, But this lullaby goes on.

~ Sarah Dessen

If you didn't love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and everything that followed it is part of letting it go.

~ Sarah Dessen

He wasn't the type for displays of affection, either verbal or not. He was disgusted by couples that made out in the hallways between classes, and got annoyed at even the slightest sappy moments in movies. But I knew he cared about me: he just conveyed it more subtly, as concise with expressing this emotion as he was with everything else. It was in the way he'd put his hand on the small of my back, for instance, or how he'd smile at me when I said something that surprised him. Once I might have wanted more, but I'd come around to his way of thinking in the time we'd been together. And we were together, all the time. So he didn't have to prove how he felt about me. Like so much else, I should just know.

~ Sarah Dessen

He was not my boyfriend. On the other hand, he wasn't just a friend either. Instead, our relationship was elastic, stretching between those two extremes depending on who else was around, how much either of us had to drink, and other varying factors. This was exactly what I wanted, as commitments had never really been my thing. And it wasn't like it was hard, either. The only trick was never giving more than you were willing to lose.

~ 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

I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good.

~ Sarah Dessen

Love is so unpredictable. That's what makes it so great.

~ 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

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

~ Sarah Dessen

You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It's always been yes when it comes to you.

~ Sarah Dessen

Are those the only options? Nothing or forever?

~ Sarah Dessen

You know, when it works, love is amazing. It's not overrated.

~ Sarah Dessen

That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.

~ Sarah Dessen

It's all in the view. That's what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count.

~ Sarah Dessen

Some people, they can't just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me... I don't know. I didn't want to fix it, to forget. It wasn't something that was broken. It's just...something that happened. And like that hole, I'm just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remembering and getting on at the same time.

~ Sarah Dessen

We'd start slow, the way we always did, because the run, and the game, could go on for awhile. Maybe even forever.That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, as I ran with Wes into that bright sun, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now.

~ Sarah Dessen

You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place.

~ Sarah Dessen

I don't get it,' Caroline said, bemused. 'She's the only one with wings. Why is that?'There were so many questions in life. You couldn't ever have all the answers. But I knew this one.It's so she can fly,' I said. Then I started to run.

~ Sarah Dessen

Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.

~ Sarah Dessen

But if everything was always smooth and perfect, you'd get too used to that, you know? You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right.

~ 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

The choices you make now, the people you surround yourself with, they all have the potential to affect your life, even who you are, forever.

~ 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

I knew that in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late again. I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome.

~ Sarah Dessen

It's not always easy being her daughter.' I think,' she said, 'sometimes it's hard no matter whose daughter you are.

~ Sarah Dessen

After all, it's all kinds of things that make up a life, right? The big, like falling in love and spending time with your family, and the little....like blow drying your hair, applying concealer, and cursing those magazine inserts. It all counts. It has to.

~ Sarah Dessen

But all I could think of was how when nothing made sense and hadn't for ages, you just have to grab onto anything you feel sure of.

~ Sarah Dessen

As for me, I was just trying to get it right, whatever that means. But now I finally felt I was on my way. Everyone had a forever, but given a choice, this would be mine. The one that began in this moment, with Wes, in a kiss that took my breath away, then gave it back - leaving meastounded, amazed and most of all, alive.

~ 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

The thing is, you can’t always have the best of everything. Because for a life to be real, you need it all: good and bad, beach and concrete, the familiar and the unknown, big talkers and small towns.

~ Sarah Dessen

Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?

~ Sarah Dessen

My mother was strong, in all the ways I was weak. She fell, she hurt, she felt. She lived. And for all the tumble of her experiences, she still had hope. Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you will never know.

~ Sarah Dessen

It seemed like this day could go in so many directions, like a spiderweb shooting out toward endless possibilities. Whenever you made a choice, especially one you'd been resisting, it always affected everything else, some in big ways, like a tremor beneath your feet, others in so tiny a shift you hardly noticed a change at all. But it was happening.

~ Sarah Dessen

Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be so 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--if not impossible--to lose.

~ Sarah Dessen