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None of it meant anything, and all of it was important.
Sarah Dessen
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It's so easy to get caught up in what people expect of you. Sometimes, you can just lose yourself.
Sarah Dessen
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I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her eyes, downing vodka and sobbing uncontrollably. "We can't heal you at Evergreen", the very somber voiceover said. "But we can help you to heal yourself." It had become our own running joke, applicable to almost anything. "Hey Cass, "I'd say, "hand me that toothpaste." "Caitlin," she'd say, her voice dark and serious. "I can't hand you the toothpaste. But I CAN help you hand the toothpaste to yourself.
Sarah Dessen
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If this was my instinct talking, I didn‟t want to hear what it was saying.
Sarah Dessen
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Again, it occurred to me how weird it was to be permanent in a place that to everyone else was only temporary. Like I could never be sure if they were the ones who weren't real, or if I was.
Sarah Dessen
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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
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…You don’t want the best of times to be just one thing, forever. You have to have a lot of bests of times, each one topping the last. You know?
Sarah Dessen
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As impossible, in fact, as keeping the moon... So I looked down the line at all my friends, knowing I would always remember this. And then I turned my gaze back up to the sky, and put my faith in that moon and its return.
Sarah Dessen
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As if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.
Sarah Dessen
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I mean, it's impossible to fake anything if you've already seen the other person in a way they'd never choose for you to. You can't go back from that.
Sarah Dessen
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The best gifts come from the heart, not the store.
Sarah Dessen
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“Well," Isaid finally, knowing he was waiting, “you make me laugh.” He nodded. “And?” “You're pretty good-looking." ""Pretty good-looking? I called you beautiful." "You want to be beautiful?" I asked him. "Are you saying I'm not?"
Sarah Dessen
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Nothing like being scolded by a hippie.
Sarah Dessen
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So this had been all I wanted, a boy who understood how I felt. Now, though, I sometimes wished for more.
Sarah Dessen
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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
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I've always written in first person. It gives the readers more insight.
Sarah Dessen
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I felt like I'd been swimming so hard, and the water growing warmer and warmer the closer I got to the top. I wasn't there yet, but now I could see the surface, rippling just beyond my fingers.
Sarah Dessen
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Needing was so easy: it came naturally, like breathing. Being needed by someone else, though, that was the hard part. But as with giving help and accepting it, we had to do both to be made complete-like links overlapping to form a chain, or a lock finding the right key.
Sarah Dessen
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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
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Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.
Sarah Dessen
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I waited. Because with Eli, he was never trying to get you to finish for him. He always knew where he was going, even if it took a little while to get there.
Sarah Dessen
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At the same time, though, I was beginning to wonder if this was just how it was supposed to be for me, like perhaps I wasn't capable of having that many people in my life at any one time. My mom turned up, Nate walked away, one door opening as another clicked shut.
Sarah Dessen
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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
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I always have a goal, even if I keep it to myself. It allows me to keep pushing myself.
Sarah Dessen
