Sarah Dessen Quotes

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

~ Sarah Dessen

Really, it had been stupid to expect anything anyway. A few late nights does not a habit, or a relationship, make.

~ Sarah Dessen

He grinned again. We'd only been seeing each other for a few weeks now, but this easy give-and-take still surprised me. From that very first day in my room, I felt like we'd somehow skipped the formalities of the Beginning of a Relationship: those awkward moments when you're not all over each other and are still feeling out the other person's boundaries and limits. Maybe this was because we'd been circling each other for a while before he finally catapulted through my window. But if I let myself think about it much - and I didn't - I had flashes of realising that I'd been comfortable with him even at the very start. Clearly, he'd been comfortable with me, grabbing my hand as he had that first day. As if he knew, even then, that we'd be here now.

~ Sarah Dessen

I didn't pretend to know Eli at all, but even so, I'd noticed that his manner was slightly hard to read. It was something in the way he talked that made it difficult to tell whether he was kidding or serious or what. This bothered me. Or intrigued me. Or both.

~ Sarah Dessen

When's something difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder- if not impossible- to lose.

~ Sarah Dessen

Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.

~ Sarah Dessen

Grieving doesn't make you imperfect. It makes you human.

~ Sarah Dessen

Look, everyone mourns at their own pace. Maybe you're just a little bit ahead of her, but she'll get to you eventually. The important thing is that you keep trying to talk to each other, even if it's difficult at first. It gets easier. I promise.

~ Sarah Dessen

Hey, and for what it's worth? Friends don't leave you alone in the woods. Friends are the ones who come and take you out.

~ Sarah Dessen

Best Friends. And I thought of what she had done all the millions of times I cried to her, collapsing at even the slightest wounding of my heart or pride. So I reached over and pulled her to me, wrapping my arms around her, and held my best friend close, returning so many favors all at once....

~ Sarah Dessen

So this had been all I wanted, a boy who understood how I felt. Now, though, I sometimes wished for more.

~ Sarah Dessen

I want the white one

~ Sarah Dessen

He wasn't what I'd thought he was; maybe he never had been. I wasn't what I'd thought I was, either.

~ Sarah Dessen

I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I'd practically invented.

~ Sarah Dessen

All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind.

~ Sarah Dessen

Why should I even bother? What's the point, really?He thought for a moment. Who says there has to be a point? he asked. Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do.

~ Sarah Dessen

for once, you believed in yourself. you believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world.

~ Sarah Dessen

Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine.

~ Sarah Dessen

What defines you isn't how many times you crash but the number of times you get back.

~ Sarah Dessen

The important thing to remember, ... is that you are a human being and worthy of respect.

~ Sarah Dessen

I'd been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.

~ Sarah Dessen

There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past.

~ Sarah Dessen

What was it like to be so confident even in your failings that you weren't the least bit bothered when other people pointed them out? I was almost envious.

~ Sarah Dessen

Life is full of screwups. You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existance.

~ Sarah Dessen

I wasn’t ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn’t that I wasn’t right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn’t right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn’t come easy for, someone like me.

~ Sarah Dessen

You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.

~ Sarah Dessen

You get used to people being a certain way; you depend on it. And when they surprise you, for better or worse, it can shake you to your core.

~ Sarah Dessen

Isn't that the way everything begins? A night, a love, a once and for all.

~ Sarah Dessen

Everything in life had its phases, and if you were smart, you learned to appreciate them all. What really mattered, though, were the people in those moments with you. Memories are what we have and what we keep, and I held mine close. The ones I knew well, like a night on the beach with a boy who would always live in my heart, and the ones yet to come with another.

~ Sarah Dessen

For you, I wish for second chances

~ Sarah Dessen

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

~ Sarah Dessen

I knew from experience that no matter how much you turn things in your head, trying to make sense of them, some people just defy all logic.

~ 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

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

Someone who normally moved so slowly, this time, for once, was long gone.

~ Sarah Dessen

I would have thought this would make me feel better.. getting to be the one to leave and not the one left behind. But it didn't. Not at all.

~ Sarah Dessen

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

... Everything he feels, he feels strongly. Too strongly, sometimes. I think he freaks people out.

~ Sarah Dessen

But I knew what it said. That I could be imperfect, but only so much. Human, but only within limits. And honest, to her or to myself, never.

~ Sarah Dessen

Jennifer Anne had prepared some complicated-looking recipe involving chicken breasts stuffed with sweet potatoes topped with a vegetable glaze. They looked perfect, but it was the kind of dish where you just knew someone had to have been pawing at your food for a long while to get it just right, their fingers all in what now you were having to stick in your mouth.

~ Sarah Dessen