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Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?
Sarah Dessen
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Events conspired to bring you back to where you'd been. It was what you did then that made all the difference: it was all about potential.
Sarah Dessen
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The fate of your heart is your choice and no one else gets a vote
Sarah Dessen
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But she wouldn't. I knew that already. My mother and I had an understanding: we worked together to be as much in control of our shared world as possible. I was suposed to be her other half, carrying my share of the weight. In the last few weeks, I'd tried to shed it, and doing so sent everything off kilter. So of course she would pull me tighter, keeping me in my place, because doing so meant she would always be sure, somehow, of her own.
Sarah Dessen
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The mistakes you make now count. Not for everything, and not forever. But they do matter, and they shape you.
Sarah Dessen
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I planned my whole future around Adam," she said now, quietly. "And now I have nothing." "No," I told her, "now you just don't have Adam. There's a big difference, Lissa. You just can't see it yet.
Sarah Dessen
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Everyone had a forever.
Sarah Dessen
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That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened - good, bad, or anywhere in between - it was always, if nothing else, all your own.
Sarah Dessen
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You knew the truth all along, Colie. That's all matters. You knew.
Sarah Dessen
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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
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I am never happy when I finish a book. I always start feeling good, and then I get to about Page 75 and start losing momentum - and I kind of pull it together at the end, but by then I think it's just all over. It's become almost a running joke among my agent and my editor - I always say that, so they don't take me seriously anymore.
Sarah Dessen
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Too many locks, not enough keys.
Sarah Dessen
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But the original was there as well—more jaded and rudimentary, functional rather than romantic. It fit not just the yellow house but another door, deep within my own heart. One that had been locked so tight for so long that I was afraid to even try it for fear of what might be on the other side
Sarah Dessen
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I was actually kind of a hot mess in high school. I did a lot of things in high school I'm not proud of. I wasn't a good student and I wasn't particularly a good daughter. I wasn't very engaged.
Sarah Dessen
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She said writting novels was like childbirth: if you truly remembered how awful it got, you'd never do it again.
Sarah Dessen
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I didn't want to leave things the way we had, unresolved, ... and tried to tell myself he cared about me enough not to look elsewhere for what I wasn't giving him.
Sarah Dessen
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Nothing happens for ages, and then all the changes come at once.
Sarah Dessen
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It takes so little to change everything. If you really thought about it, it would scare you to death.
Sarah Dessen
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I'm always hopeful. I feel like I'm at the prom sitting against the wall waiting for someone to ask me to dance.
Sarah Dessen
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I always wrote about girls that went to the beach and had that summer that changed everything. So I was interested in what it would be like to live in a tourist town where everyone has these life changing experiences, but your whole life is there.
Sarah Dessen
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Society. The same society, I might add, that dictates that little girls should always be sugar and spice and everything nice, which encourages them not to be assertive. And that, in turn, then leads to low self-esteem, which can lead to eating disorders and increased tolerance and acceptance of domestic, sexual, and substance abuse." "You get all that from a pink Onesie?" Leah said after a moment.
Sarah Dessen
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It wasn't about being happy or unhappy. I just didn't want to be me anymore.
Sarah Dessen
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You want me to give her a key?" the guy asked. "I want you to give her a possibility," she told him, looking at my necklace again. "And that's what a key represents. An open door, a chance. You know?
Sarah Dessen
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It was just perfect, just right all at once.
Sarah Dessen
