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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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It’s never something huge that changes the 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
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Pretend to be a delinquent?" I asked clarifying. "You can do it," Dave advised me. "Just don't smile, and try to look like you're considering stealing something.
Sarah Dessen
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As if he was beating me to the punch, his words living forever, while I was left speechless, no rebuttal, no words left to say.
Sarah Dessen
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I honestly don't have many creative outlets. I'm not crafty - although motherhood has forced me to try to be - and I can only draw trees, beaches, and clouds. I'm a so-so cook except for deviled eggs. Writing has always been the one thing I feel that I am pretty good at doing. But it's enough, thank goodness.
Sarah Dessen
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I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.
Sarah Dessen
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After all with me & Marshall, it had never been about words or conversation, where there was too much to be risked or lost. Here, though, in the quiet pressed against each other, this felt familiar to me. And it was nice to let someone get close again, even if it was just for a little while.
Sarah Dessen
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Fine...a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn't really care to know the truth.
Sarah Dessen
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The worst part was that I had things I wanted to tell my mother, too many to count, but none of them would go down so easy. She'd been through too much, between my siters-I could not add to the weight. So instead, I did my best to balance it out, bit by bit, word by word, story by story, even if none of them were true.
Sarah Dessen
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No matter how much time has passed, these things still affect us and the world we live in. If you don't pay attention to the past, you'll never understand the future. It's all linked together.
Sarah Dessen
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Once, she'd been a pro at decompressing, loved to sit on the back deck of the beach house in one of our splintery Adirondack chairs for hours at a time, staring at the ocean. She never had a book or the paper or anything else to distract her. Just the horizon, but it kept her attention, her gaze unwavering. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.
Sarah Dessen
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Life has a way of disregarding even your best intentions.
Sarah Dessen
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Doesn't it seem sometimes that the whole world's uphill but at least we know the way back will be easy.
Sarah Dessen
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You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn't like a light switch, easy to turn on or off. If you were in, you were in. Out, you were out.
Sarah Dessen
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How weird that must be, to stay the same as everyone else changes.
Sarah Dessen
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The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, "is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life.
Sarah Dessen
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Wake up, Caitlin, Mr. Lensing had said. But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away.
Sarah Dessen
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I eased back on my elbows, tilting my head back to look up at the sky, which was pinkish, streaked with red. This was the time we knew best, that stretch of day going from dusk to dark. It seemed like we were always waiting for nighttime here. I could feel the trampoline easing up and down, moved by our own breathing, bringing us in small increments up and back from the sky as the colors faded, slowly, and the stars began to show themselves.
Sarah Dessen
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There are worse addictions than reality TV, chocolate and coffee.
Sarah Dessen
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I hoped that Grace would be a little bit of the best of all of us: Scarlett's spirit, and my mother's strength, Marion's determination, and Michael's sly humor. I wasn't sure what I could give, not just yet. But I would know when I told her about the comet, years from now, I would know. And I would lean close to her ear, saying the words no one else could hear, explaining it all. The language of solace and comets, and the girls we all become, in the end.
Sarah Dessen
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Behind the camera, I was invisible. When I lifted it up to my eye it was like I crawled into the lens, losing myself there. and everything else fell away.
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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Well, it's New Year's now but I don't feel that way anymore. I wonder if you do either. Something's happening to me. It's like I'm shrinking smaller and smaller and I can't stp it. There's just os much wrong that I can't imagine the shame in admitting even the tiniest part of it. When you left it was like there was this huge gap to fill, but instead of spreading wide enough to do it I just fell right in, and I'm still falling. Like I'm half-asleep, and I can't wake up, can't wake up.
Sarah Dessen
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For once, you believed in yourself. You believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world.
Sarah Dessen
