Sarah dessen quotes

Your actions is like a raindrop; it falls into the pond making ripples and then its over.

It's just that...I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It's the universe's way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It's how life is.

The truth about forever is that it is happening right now.

Very quietly, I heard a voice in my ear.It said, in a weird, cheesy, right-out-of-one-of-my-mother's-novels way, "Ah. Wemeet again." I turned my head, just slightly, and right there, practically on top of me, was theguy from the car dealership. He was wearing a red Mountain Fresh Detergent T-shirt - not just fresh: mountain fresh! - it proclaimed, and was smiling at me. "Oh,God," I said. "No, it's Dexter.

The worst thing you can do if you miss or need someone is let them know it.

You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.

I've always written in first person. It gives the readers more insight.

It was just one of those things," I said, "You know, that just happen. You don't think or plan. You just do it.

Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?

It shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder ― or impossible ― to lose.

Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.

I always thought I was different.

Grieving doesn't make you imperfect. It makes you human.

But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.

I didnt pay atteniton to times or distance, instead focusing on how it felt just to be in motion, knowing it wasn't about the finish line but how I got there that mattered.

If you didn't love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and everything that followed it is part of letting it go.

Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was so damned hard.

It's always very pure, that last moment before an ugly, unsettling truth hits someone. The most stark of before-and-afters.

…It’s not just where you go, but how you choose to get there.

She knew I could tell with one glance, one look, one simple instant. It was her eyes. Despite the thick makeup, they were still dark-rimmed., haunted, and sad. Most of all though, they were familiar. The fact that we were in front of hundreds of strangers changed nothing at all. I'd spent a summer with those same eyes-scared, lost, confused-staring back at me. I would have known them anywhere.

Sometimes love can be an ugly thing.

It was amazing how you could get so far from where you'd planned, and yet find it was exactly were you needed to be.

After all, it's all kinds of things that make up a life, right? The big, like falling in love and spending time with your family, and the little....like blow drying your hair, applying concealer, and cursing those magazine inserts. It all counts. It has to.

Look. We both know life is short, Macy. Too short to waste a single second with anyone who doesn't appreciate and value you.

But that was the problem with having the answers. It was only after you gave them that you realized they sometimes weren't what people wanted to hear.

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.

You want to take me to a movie?" I asked. "Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off.

Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.

The fate of your heart is your choice and no one else gets a vote

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.

This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going.

Your past is always your past. Even if you forget it, it remembers you.

Too many locks, not enough keys.

Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.

Once, I was easy. Now, I was choosy. See? Big difference.

The truth was I knew, after all those flat January days, that I deserved better. I deserved I love yous and kiwi fruits and warriors coming to my door, besotted with love. I deserved pictures of my face in a thousand expressions, and the warmth of a baby's kick beneath my hand. I deserved to grow, and to change, to become all the girls I could be over the course of my life, each one better than the last.

Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn't make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you're doing it out of fear.

It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovered--so many locks not enough keys.

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.

When he stopped walking and kissed me a few minutes later, it was like time had stopped, with the air, my heart, and the world all so still. And it was this I remembered every other time I was with Marshall.

After everything that happened, how could I miss him? But I did, I did.

You get what you give, but also what you're willing to take.

All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough by to shoulder the rest.

Suddenly, I was just sure he was going to kiss me. He was there, I could feel his breath, the ground solid beneath us. But then something crossed his face, a thought, a hesitation, and he shifted slightly. Not now. Not yet. It was something I'd done so often - weighing what I could afford to risk, right at that moment - that I recognized it instantly. It was like looking in a mirror.

You can't always get the perfect moment. Sometimes, you just have to do the best you can under the circumstances.

There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can ever truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.

It was just perfect, just right all at once.

As if it didnt matter what was on, but instead how hard i was listening.

With total strangers, it had always been my policy to expect the worst. Usually they-and those that you knew best, for that matter-did not disappoint.

If you try anything, if you try to lose weight, or to improve yourself, or to love, or to make the world a better place, you have already achieved something wonderful, before you even begin. Forget failure. If things don't work out the way you want, hold your head up high and be proud. And try again. And again. And again!

Fifteen minutes later, a meeting was called. "Okay, look." Deb's face was dead serious. "I know I just joined this project, and I don't want to offend anyone. But I'm going to be honest. I think you've been going about this all wrong." "I'm offended," Dave told her flatly.

Life is full of screwups. You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existance.

Don't be a fool. Don't give up something important to hold onto someone who can't even say they love you.

Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.

There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.

You should never be surprised when someone treats you with respect, you should expect it.

Nothing happens for ages, and then all the changes come at once.

"It's gonna be okay," I said. It was the first time in a long time that I believed it. "It will."

It was like when you're a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-mart and it's just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school.

And to know me, as you have discovered, is to love me.

If things don't work out the way you want, hold your head up high and be proud. And try again. And again. And again!

for once, you believed in yourself. you believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world.

Silence is so freaking loud

I had no illusions about love anymore. It came, it went, it left casualties or it didn't. People weren't meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say.

I don't believe in failure, because simply by saying you've failed, you've admitted you attempted. And anyone who attempts is not a failure. Those who truly fail in my eyes are the ones who never try at all. The ones who sit on the couch and whine and moan and wait for the world to change for them.

It took a lot of work to be perfect.

The thing is I'm a great believer in the perfect moment. They don't come around that often.

Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. It just doesn’t catch up, it overtakes … blotting out the future.

I am not breaking my rules,' I snapped, hating that I'd ended up on the advice-recieving end of things, jumping from Dear Remy to Confused in Cincinnati all in one summer.

You're not a sucker. You're just nice. You give people the benefit of the doubt.

Don't think or judge, just listen.

Sometimes really, really bad things happen to people, and there is no explanation and no reason whatsoever.

There are worse addictions than reality TV, chocolate and coffee.

Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine.

Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you.

I can say I made a lot of mistakes, but I don't regret things. Because at least I didn't spend a life standing outside, wondering what living would be like.

Everyone had a forever.

Being brave and self-confident doesn't necessarily start inside...It starts with the rest of the world, and it leads back to you.

But it's strange, when you've always been told something is true, like the moon will come back. You need proof. And while you wait, you feel the entire balance of your world just tipping. It's crazy. But when it's over, and it does come back, that's the best, because it's all you want, everything narrows to just that. It's this great rush, like for that one second everything's okay with the world again. It's amazing.

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.

I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well.

Life's too short to worry about the little things. Enjoy what you have today, not what you might get tomorrow

Sometimes a question can hurt more than an answer.

Well, it's true that I have been hurt in my life. Quite a bit. But it's also true that I have loved, and been loved. And that carries a weight of its own. A greater weight, in my opinion. It's like that pie chart we talked about earlier. In the end, I'll look back on my life and see that the greatest piece of it was love. The problems, the divorces, the sadness... those will be there too, but just smaller slivers, tiny pieces.

The choices you make now, the people you surround yourself with, they all have the potential to affect your life, even who you are, forever.

No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater.

Everything, in the end, comes down to timing. One second, one minute, one hour could make all the difference.

That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.

It's all in the view. That's what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count.

It's funny how someone's perception of you can be formed without you even knowing it.

If you have just one person believe in you, you'll always find your way

Relationships dont always make sense. Especially from the outside

And no relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater.

It's okay to accept things from people. It doesn't make you weak or helpless.

Pieces and parts were always easier to process. The full picture, the entire story, was another thing entirely. But you just never knew. Sometimes, people could surprise you.

I think I'm way too much of a control freak to co-author anything with anyone. I have a hard enough time writing with myself! I admire people that can do it, but it's not for me.

I just thought to my self, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural chemistry, if you will. And I had a feeling that something big was going to happen. To both of us. That we were, in fact, meant to be together.

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.

Nah," I said. "But if it does, just tell him I said to get back on the bike." "What?" "He'll understand.

I should have told you from the start. I will let you down.

You know the minute you stop thinking about it, it'll happen.

Music is a total constant. That's why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in your or the world, that one song says the same, just like that moment.

Like life isn't complicated enough. You should at least be able to follow the signs.

I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.

My point is, there are a lot of people in the world. No one ever sees everything the same way you do; it just doesn't happen. So when you find one person who gets a couple of things, especially if they're important ones... you might as well hold on to them. You know?

I like flaws. I think they make things interesting.

funny how a beautiful song could tell such a sad story

Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.

If you could just be nice, then you wouldn't have to worry about arguments at all. but being nice wasn't as easy as it seemed, especially when the rest of the world could be so mean.

I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered.

Let's just start and see what happens.

Look, the point is there's no way to be a hundred percent sure about anyone or anything. So you're left with a choice. Either hope for the best or just expect the worst.

Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that, despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise.

Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that's what makes you strong.

You can't make any one person your world. The trick is to take what each can give you and build a world from it.

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.

There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.

Sometimes it seems safer to hold it all in, where the only person who can judge is yourself.

Fall in love with someone who truly deserves your heart. Not with someone who plays with it.

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. Cora was right - we had many families over time. Our family of origion, the family we created, as well as the gorups you moved thorugh while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them were perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You couldn't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build a world from it.

But it was okay not to fit in everywhere, as long as you did somewhere.

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.

You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It's not overrated. There's a reason for all those songs.

Stop it. Seriously. This isn't funny.' 'You're right.' A pause. 'It's pathetic.

There are some things in this world you rely on, like a sure bet. And when they let you down, shifting from where you've carefully placed them, it shakes your faith, right where you stand.