Sarah Dessen Quotes: 81

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

  The Truth About Forever

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

  Someone Like You

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

  This Lullaby

• Don't think or judge, just listen.

  Just Listen

• 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...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.

  This Lullaby

• 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.

  Just Listen

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

  This Lullaby

• 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.

  This Lullaby

• 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.

  Just Listen

• 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

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

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

  This Lullaby

• 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.

  The Truth About Forever

• 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.

  Lock and Key

• So you're always honest,"I said."Aren't you?" "No,"I told him. "I'm not." "Well, that's good to know, I guess." "I'm not saying I'm a liar,"I told him. He raised his eyebrows. "That's not how I meant it, anyways." "How'd you mean it, then?" "I just...I don't always say what I feel." "Why not?" "Because the truth sometimes hurts,"I said."Yeah,"he said. "So do lies, though.

  Just Listen

• 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.

  The Truth About Forever

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

  Keeping the Moon

• I like flaws. I think they make things interesting.

  The Truth About Forever

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

• 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.

  This Lullaby

• Silence is so freaking loud

  Just Listen

• 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.

  Just Listen

• There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your heart.

  Just Listen

• All I'd ever wanted was to forget. but even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below.

  Just Listen

• Some people, they can't just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me... I don't know. I didn't want to fix it, to forget. It wasn't something that was broken. It's just...something that happened. And like that hole, I'm just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remembering and getting on at the same time.

  The Truth About Forever

• Relationships dont always make sense. Especially from the outside

  Along for the Ride

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

  This Lullaby

• Wherever you will go, I will let you down, But this lullaby goes on.

  This Lullaby

• 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.

  The Truth About Forever

• You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn't like a light switch, easy to turn on or off. If you were in, you were in. Out, you were out.

  Along for the Ride

• You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place.

  Someone Like You

• I don't get it,' Caroline said, bemused. 'She's the only one with wings. Why is that?'There were so many questions in life. You couldn't ever have all the answers. But I knew this one.It's so she can fly,' I said. Then I started to run.

  The Truth About Forever

• 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.

  What Happened to Goodbye

• 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.

  Dreamland

• But if everything was always smooth and perfect, you'd get too used to that, you know? You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right.

  The Truth About Forever

• It didn't make you noble to step away from something that wasn't working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.

  Along for the Ride

• 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.

  The Truth About Forever

• I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good.

  What Happened to Goodbye

• 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.

  The Truth About Forever

• Love is so unpredictable. That's what makes it so great.

  This Lullaby

• 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.

  The Truth About Forever

• The further you go, the more you have to be proud of. At the same time, in order to come a long way, you have to be behind to begin with. IN the end, though maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.

  Lock and Key

• 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.

  Keeping the Moon

• Are those the only options? Nothing or forever?

  This Lullaby

• I knew that in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late again. I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome.

  The Truth About Forever

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

  Lock and Key

• Macy: “In Truth,” I said, “there are no rules other than you have to tell the truth.”Wes: “How do you win?” he askedMacy: “That,” I said, “is such a boy question.

  The Truth About Forever

• You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It's always been yes when it comes to you.

  What Happened to Goodbye

• 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.

  What Happened to Goodbye

• But all I could think of was how when nothing made sense and hadn't for ages, you just have to grab onto anything you feel sure of.

  The Truth About Forever

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

  Someone Like You

• Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be so 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--if not impossible--to lose.

  Along for the Ride

• That first love. And the first one who breaks your heart. For me, they just happen to be the same person.

  Along for the Ride

• It's not always easy being her daughter.' I think,' she said, 'sometimes it's hard no matter whose daughter you are.

  Along for the Ride

• 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.

  The Truth About Forever

• You know, when it works, love is amazing. It's not overrated.

  This Lullaby

• The future was one thing that could never be broken, because it had not yet had the chance to be anything.

  Saint Anything

• 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.

  Dreamland

• As for me, I was just trying to get it right, whatever that means. But now I finally felt I was on my way. Everyone had a forever, but given a choice, this would be mine. The one that began in this moment, with Wes, in a kiss that took my breath away, then gave it back - leaving meastounded, amazed and most of all, alive.

  The Truth About Forever

• Yeah. I mean, acknowledging is easy. Something happened or it didn't. But understanding... that's where things get sticky.

  What Happened to Goodbye

• 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.

• When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a colouring book, with the inside not yet completed.

• Look,” he said, “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.”If you expect the worst, you’re never disappointed,” I pointed out.Yeah, but who lives like that?

• Oh for God's sake,' Heather said, 'I wish you two would just go out, fail miserably as a couple, and get it over with.

  What Happened to Goodbye

• Because you have to just go with the flow. Your life is not your own, with people coming in and out all the time. You get mellow because you have to.

• It’s the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth.

  Along for the Ride

• The best gifts come from the heart, not the store.

  Lock and Key

• Too many locks, not enough keys.

• Your mother won a special reward,"she told me, "because everyone had a head in her pictures. We all applauded.

  Dreamland

• It all counts,' Adam said again. 'And the bottom line is, what defines you isn't how many times you crash, but the number of times you get back on the bike. As long as it's one more, you're all good.-pg 325 Along for the Ride

  Along for the Ride

• My mother was strong, in all the ways I was weak. 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 will never know.

  This Lullaby

• 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.

  The Moon and More

• Failing sucks. But it's better than the alternative." "Which is?" "Not even trying."Now he did look at me, straight on. "Life's short, you know?

  Along for the Ride

• Maybe marriage, like life, isn't only about the big moments, whether they be good or bad. Maybe it's all the small things—like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day—that stretches out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.

  This Lullaby

• Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we'd found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.

  The Truth About Forever

• But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable,walking through this life half-sleeping,everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids.I didn't care if they sang to me.All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again,pulling me upward into light,to drown.

  Dreamland

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

  Along for the Ride

• It seemed like this day could go in so many directions, like a spiderweb shooting out toward endless possibilities. Whenever you made a choice, especially one you'd been resisting, it always affected everything else, some in big ways, like a tremor beneath your feet, others in so tiny a shift you hardly noticed a change at all. But it was happening.

• I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, and everyone was crying.

  Along for the Ride

• But as long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.

  The Truth About Forever

• Fine,"he repeated, and I wondered why it was I kept coming back to this, again and again, a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn't really care to know the truth.

  The Truth About Forever