Sarah Dessen Quotes

There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.

~ Sarah Dessen

And so really, you have given me no choice but to take you shopping byforce.” She sighed, then reached up, dropping her sunglasses down fromtheir perch on her head to cover her eyes. “Do you even realize how happythe average teenage girl would be in your shoes? I have a credit card. We’reat the mall. I want to buy you things. It’s like adolescent nirvana.”- Cora

~ 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'd still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real.

~ Sarah Dessen

Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.

~ Sarah Dessen

Two a.m.' He swallowed, then said, You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they're asleep or it's cold or you need to be bailed out of jail...they'll come for you. It's like, the highest level of friendship.

~ Sarah Dessen

Friends are honest with each other. Even if the truth hurts.-Maggie

~ Sarah Dessen

You only really fall apart in front of the people you know can piece you back together.

~ Sarah Dessen

As Isabel acted out her date, both of them laughing, I stayed in the kitchen, out of sight, and pretended she was telling me, too. And that, for once, I was part of this hidden language of laughter and silliness and girls that was, somehow, friendship.

~ Sarah Dessen

Maybe we were all destined to just keep doing the same stupid things, over and over again, never really learning a single thing.

~ Sarah Dessen

So you should remember that, when you're thinking about what other people can deal with. Maybe it's not so bad.

~ Sarah Dessen

It's okay to accept things from people. It doesn't make you weak or helpless.

~ Sarah Dessen

As I rolled over, stretching out, my only thought was to go back to the dream I'd been having, which I couldn't remember, other than that it had been good, in that distant, hopeful way unreal things can be.

~ Sarah Dessen

It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.

~ Sarah Dessen

I was distracted, thinking about what she'd said, until she got to this last part. Sherman? I said.She nodded. That's John and Craig's friend. He's visiting from Shreveport.Sherman from Shreveport? I said. This is the guy you're determined I go out

~ Sarah Dessen

Like it takes so little not only to change something, but to make you forget the way it once was, as well.

~ Sarah Dessen

But wasn't that always the way. It's never something huge that changes everything, but instead the tiniest of details, irrevocably tweaking the balance of the universe while you're busy focusing on the big picture.

~ Sarah Dessen

I would miss Colby, but it wasn't going anywhere. All the more reason why I should.

~ Sarah Dessen

It's not that I believe everything happens for a reason, it's just that...I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It's the universe's way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It's how life is.

~ Sarah Dessen

I'm not into appearances. I like flaws, I think they make things interesting.

~ 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

Sometimes, you have to manufacture your own history. Give fate a push, so to speak.

~ Sarah Dessen

Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.

~ Sarah Dessen

I remembered Owen telling me how music had saved him in Phoenix, that it drowned everything out, and it was the same for me now. As long as I had something to listen to, I could blur the things I didn't want to think about, if not block them out completely.

~ Sarah Dessen

a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment. Which is pretty amazing, when you actually think about it.

~ Sarah Dessen

Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.

~ Sarah Dessen

The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life.

~ Sarah Dessen

For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.'Really,' I said.We're passive-aggressive people,' she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. 'Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now, for instance, I'm not speaking to two of my sisters and one brother... At mine [my house], silence is golden. And common.'To me,' Reggie said, picking up a bottle of Vitamin A and moving it thoughtfully from one hand to the other, 'family is, like, the wellspring of human energy. The place where all life begins.'...Harriet considered this as she took a sip of coffee. 'Huh,' she said. 'I guess when someone else does something worse. Then you need people on your side, so you make up with one person, jsut as you're getting pissed off at another.' So it's an endless cycle,' I said.I guess.' She took another sip. 'Coming together, falling apart. Isn't that what families are all about?

~ Sarah Dessen

She smiled, pulling the photo a little closer, and I wondered if I should ask her, too, the question for my project, get her definition. But as she ran a finger slowly across the faces, identifying each one, it occurred to me that maybe this was her answer. All those names, strung together like beads on a chain. Coming together, splitting apart, but still and always, a family. (page 289) ~Ruby

~ Sarah Dessen

It's funny how two people can grow up in the same town, go to the same school, have the same friends, and end up so totally different. Family, or lack of it, counts for more than you'd think.

~ Sarah Dessen

I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own. Maybe you would feel lost in the crowd. Or sheltered by it. Whatever the case, one things was for sure: like it or not, you'd never be alone.

~ Sarah Dessen

Well,' she said, adjusting a pot lid, 'I have my family of origin, which is you and Mom. And then Jaime's family, my family of marriage. And hopefully, I'll have another family, as well. Our family, that we make. Me and Jaimie.'Now I felt bad, bringing this up so soon after Jamie's gaffe. 'You will,' I said.She turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. 'I hope so. But that's just the thing, right? Family isn't something that's supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They're born, they die. It's always evolving, turning into something else. even that picture of Jamie's family was only the true representation for that one day. But the next , someone had probably changed. It had to.'...Later, when the kitchen had filled up with people looking for more wine, and children chasing Roscoe, I looked across all the chaos at Cora, thinking that of course you would assume our definitions would be similar, since we had come from the same place. But this wasn't actually true. We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone's eyes. Our definitions were as different as we were ourselves.

~ Sarah Dessen

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed there, regardless.

~ Sarah Dessen

We were there, together, and in the next room I could hear that monitor beeping. Keeping track of another heart’s beat and giving enduring, solid proof of our own.

~ Sarah Dessen

Outside, the ocean was crashing, waves hitting sand, then pulling back to sea. I thought of everything being washed away, again and again. We make such messes in this life, both accidentally and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn't really make anything neater. It just masks what is below. It's only when you really dig down deep, go underground, that you can see who you really are.

~ Sarah Dessen

If you try anything, if you try to lose weight, or to improve yourself, or to love, or to make the world a better place, you have already achieved something wonderful, before you even begin. Forget failure. If things don't work out the way you want, hold your head up high and be proud. And try again. And again. And again!

~ Sarah Dessen

It was amazing how you could get so far from where you'd planned, and yet find it was exactly were you needed to be.

~ Sarah Dessen

That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.

~ Sarah Dessen

It was kind of soothing, these sounds of lives being lived all around me, for better or for worse. And there I was, in the middle of them all, newly reborn and still waiting for mine to begin.

~ Sarah Dessen

I was used to being invisible. People rarely saw me, and if they did, they never looked close. I wasn't shiny and charming like my brother, stunning and graceful like my mother, or smart and dynamic like my friends. That's the thing, though. You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.

~ Sarah Dessen