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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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Every book teaches me something about my process, and they are all challenging in one way or another.
Sarah Dessen
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My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest.
Sarah Dessen
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And trying to break it down this way, to minor and major offenses, maybes and what-ifs, was like arguing over the origin of cracks in a broken egg. It was done. How it happened didn't matter anymore.
Sarah Dessen
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That was the thing: Once, the difference between light and dark had been basic. One was good, one bad. Suddenly, though, things weren’t so clear. The dark was still a mystery, something hidden, something to be scared of, but I’d come to fear the light, too. It was where everything was revealed, or seemed to be. Eyes closed, I saw only the blackness, reminding me of this one thing, the most deep of my secrets; eyes open, there was only the world that didn’t know it, bright, inescapable, and somehow, still there.
Sarah Dessen
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I didn't trot my pain out to show around. I kept it better hidden than anyone. I did.
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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I was so scared about being discovered, but nobody came. Nobody heard. In my own ears, though, my sobs sounded primal and scary, like something I would have turned off if I'd been able to.
Sarah Dessen
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Fall in love with someone who truly deserves your heart. Not with someone who plays with it.
Sarah Dessen
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What you have to decide... is how you want your life to be. If your forever was ending tomorrow, would this be how you'd want to have spent it? Listen, the truth is, nothing is guaranteed. You know that more than anybody. So dont be afraid. Be alive.
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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You own a Tic Tac. Gum is just borrowed. - Esther
Sarah Dessen
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Rogerson," I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, "where would I find the pelagic zone?" "In the open sea," he said. "Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints.
Sarah Dessen
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It's a big deal when you finally get the chance to do the one thing you want to do - need to do - more than anything. It can kind of scare the crap out of you.
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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During the long stretches of quiet two-lane highway, with the sun setting in the distance, it was somehow easier to say things aloud, and regardless of what was said, we just kept moving toward that horizon.
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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Sure, there was no guarantee any of these things would actually happen as he envisioned. But maybe that wasn‟t the point.It was the planning that counted, whether it ever came to fruition or not.
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
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I just have to be super strong when it comes to my work time. Shut the browser, ignore the email alerts, and just WRITE.
Sarah Dessen
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Some writers pick a topic and write around that, but I like to include it all.
Sarah Dessen
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Usually when I finish the draft of a book, I'm sure I'll never write another one. I'm just that tired and sick of myself. But then another idea starts percolating. It usually begins with the narrator's name, then some idea that intrigues me about her life or situation. I try to ignore it as long as I can, because I know when I start writing, I'll be right back into it, every single day. But eventually, I just have to. It's a compulsion!
Sarah Dessen
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The truth was, I wasn't sure. But I wanted to keep believing people could change, and it was certainly easier to do so when you were in the midst of it.
Sarah Dessen
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If what you're asking is how I debated whether or not to love her the answer is I didn't. Not at all. It just happened. I didn't ever question it; by the time I realized what was happening, it was already done.
Sarah Dessen
