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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
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How it felt to have the world moving beneath me, a hand gripping mine, knowing if I fell, at least I wouldn't do it alone.
Sarah Dessen
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And I felt comfort. Finally. All I'd wanted for so long was for someone to explain everything that had happened to me in this same way. To label it neatly on a page: this leads to this leads to this. I knew, deep down, it was more complicated than that, but watching Jason, I was hopeful. He took the mess that was Macbeth and fixed it, and I had to wonder if he might, in some small way, be able to do the same for me. So I moved myself closer to him, and I'd been there ever since.
Sarah Dessen
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I'm sorry," I heard him say again. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a sudden blur of movement as he slid out of his seat, left some bills for the breakfast he wouldn't eat, and walked away. And as he did, I thought again of those mornings in the hallway at school, way back in ninth grade. Everything had started in such sharp detail, each aspect pronounced and clear. Obviously, endings were different. Harder to see, full of shapes that could be one thing or another, with all the things that you were once so sure of suddenly not familiar, if they were even recognizable at all.
Sarah Dessen
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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
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It's all about you, Colie." She touched one finger to her temple, tap tap tap. "Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine." There is something infectious about confidence. And for that one moment, with my eyebrows burning and my eyes watering, I believed. "And good hair never hurt either.
Sarah Dessen
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This Lullaby is only a few words, a simple run of chords, quiet here in this spare room, but you can hear it, hear it, wherever you may go, even if I let you down, this lullaby plays on.
Sarah Dessen
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Oh for God's sake,' Heather said, 'I wish you two would just go out, fail miserably as a couple, and get it over with.
Sarah Dessen
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Just because something's damaged doesn't mean it shouldn't be treated with respect.' 'Ad,' Wallace said, 'it's a coffee table, not an orphan.
Sarah Dessen
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There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your heart.
Sarah Dessen
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but accepting help doesn‟t have to mean giving up control.
Sarah Dessen
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I think my biggest problem, though, at least in drafts, is not repeating myself. After eight books I get worried that a character or piece of dialog might be too much like something I've already done. So it's a challenge to keep it fresh.
Sarah Dessen
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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
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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
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You’re always a kid around your parents… Unless they’re acting like children. Then you don’t get the chance.
Sarah Dessen
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This was always the problem with my mother and me, I suddenly realized. There were so many things we thought we agreed on, but anythign can have two meanings. Like sides of a coin, it just matters how it falls.
Sarah Dessen
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Looking at the pond, all I could think was that it is an incredivle thing, how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all.
Sarah Dessen
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Like a blinking cursor on an empty page, it was just the first thing. The beginning of the beginning. But at least it was done.
Sarah Dessen
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I really just love to read, period, whether it be books or magazines or the back of the cereal box. It's the one thing I can always count on to calm me down, take me away and inspire me, all at once.
Sarah Dessen
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It was like that part of my life, was just gone. It was almost too easy, for something I once thought had meant everything.
Sarah Dessen
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There's something nice about the silence of a car ride in the dark, going home. When you were tired of the radio and conversation, and it was okay to just be alone with your thoughts and the road ahead. If you're that comfortable with someone, you don't have to talk.
Sarah Dessen
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When he first put his arms around me, it was tentative, like maybe he expected I'd pull away. When I didn't, he moved in closer, his hands smoothing over my shoulders, and in my mind I saw myself retreating a million times when people tried to do this same thing: my sister or my mother, pulling back and into myself, tucking everything out of sight, where only I knew where to find it. This time, though, I gave in. I let Wes pull me against him, pressing my head against his chest, where I could feel his heart beating, steady and true.
Sarah Dessen
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Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that, despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise.
Sarah Dessen
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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
