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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
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She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.
Sarah Dessen
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A thump thump thump noise that was so unfamiliar, and yet I couldn't quite place it. But I knew it. It was - "Mmm-hmmm," Monica murmured, just as Wes came view into the path. He was running, his pace quick and steady. He was in shorts, his shirt off, staring ahead as he passed. His back was tan and gleaming with sweat.
Sarah Dessen
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And for one second, it was like I could feel the timing clicking together, finally pieces falling into place.
Sarah Dessen
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You can't act like you care about someone but not let them care about you.
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 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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You're wrong," I told her. "I lost that faith a long time ago." She looked at me as I said this, an expression of quiet understanding on her face. "Maybe you didn't, though," she said softly. "Lose it, I mean." "Lissa." "No, just hear me out." She looked out at the road for a second, then back at me. "Maybe, you just misplaced it, you know? It's been there. But you just haven't been looking in the right spot. Because lost means forever, it's gone. But misplaced... that means it's still around, somewhere. Just not where you thought.
Sarah Dessen
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My agent is so totally honest, which is just what every writer needs. She won't let me sell a crappy book, even if I want to.
Sarah Dessen
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Wake up, Caitlin, Mr. Lensing had said. But what he didn't underĀstand 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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Change is inevitable, though," he replied. "As is disappointment. Best to get used to it now.
Sarah Dessen
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If you're not getting hurt, you're not riding hard enough.
Sarah Dessen
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I wasn't very happy in high school: it was a confusing and sort of sad time for me.
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 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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Maybe that's what you got when you stood over your grief, facing it finally. A sense of its depths, its area, the distance across, and the way over or around it, whichever you chose in the end.
Sarah Dessen
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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 would never know.
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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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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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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Please. She sighed. 'Can't a girl have high standards? I don't want an ordinary boy.
Sarah Dessen
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Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.
Sarah Dessen
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There are worse addictions than reality TV, chocolate and coffee.
Sarah Dessen
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He'd always had that fearless optimism that made cynics like me squirm. I wondered if it was enough for both of us. I would never know from here, though. And time was passing. Crucial minutes and seconds, each one capable of changing everything.
Sarah Dessen
