Sarah Dessen famous quotes

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

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Treats

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Love #Inspirational #Time

Let's just start and see what happens.
-- Sarah Dessen

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

#Music #Peace #People

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

#Inspirational #Life #Strength

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Song #People #Forever

Don't think or judge, just listen.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Inspirational #Thinking #Judging

I like flaws. I think they make things interesting.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Love #Life #Positivity

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

#Love #Marriage #I Hate You

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Love #Order #Differences

the truth about forever is that it is happening right now
-- Sarah Dessen

#Forever #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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Inspirational #Life #I Hate You

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

#Friendship #Optimistic #Awful

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

#Lasts #Ugly #Moments

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

#Beautiful #Self Esteem #World

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!
-- Sarah Dessen

#Determination #Work Out #Trying

The best gifts come from the heart, not the store.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Heart #Stores #Best Gift

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Relationship #Order #Perfect

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Regret #Mistake #Would Be

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

#Giving #Willing

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#People #Stories #Pieces

But I saw Blake earlier and he said he and Nate were taking off for an overnight business thing. So..." "... you're just going to jump their fence and their pool," I finished for her. Silence. Then Jamie said, "It's twenty-five degrees! In December! Do you know what this means?" "The apocalypse?
-- Sarah Dessen

#Mean #Silence #Degrees

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

#Mom #Doors #People

Look," I said, "We knew Jason and Becky would be back, the break would end. This isn't a surprise, it's what's supposed to happen. It's what we wanted. Right?" "Is it?" he asked. "Is it what you want?" Whether he intended it to be or not, this was the final question, the last Truth. If I said what I really thought, I was opening myself up for a hurt bigger than I could even imagine. I didn't have it in me. We changed and altered so many rules, but it was this one, the only one when we'd started, that I would break. "Yes," I said.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Hurt #Jason #Would Be

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

#Grief #Anchors #Bereavement

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?
-- Sarah Dessen

#Couple #People #Important

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Kissing #Mirrors #Risk

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

#Home #People #House

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Life #Eye #Lenses

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Summer #Confused #Eye

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Needed

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Waiting #Over You #Saving

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Self #Feelings #Together

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#People #Answers #Problem

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

#Acceptance #Tolerance #Accepting

True friendship is a promise you keep forever.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Forever #Promise #True Friendship

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

#Love #Romantic #I Hate You

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

#Falling In Love #Heart #Happy Life

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

#Doe #Said #Bike

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Hurt #Sadness #Divorce

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Family #Divorce #People

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Struggle #Fighting #Would Be

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

#Life #Long #Fit

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Life #Mean #Views

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

#Thinking #Said #Plans

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Running #Teacher #School

That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Grief #Grieving #Language

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Life #People #Forever

Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was so damned hard.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Leaving #Easy

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

#Heart #World #Quiet

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

#Loving Someone #Facts #Leap Of Faith

Grieving doesn't make you imperfect. It makes you human.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Grief #Grieving #Sorrow

All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Real #Fresh Start #Honest

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Song #Memories #Book

Relationships dont always make sense. Especially from the outside
-- Sarah Dessen

#Relationship #Couple #Make Sense

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

#Perfect #Sometimes #Moments

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Change #Eye #Scary

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Distance #Knowing #Pay

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Space #Together #Middle

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

#Inspirational #Judging #Sometimes

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Stories #Ends #Harder

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Past #Together #World

Maybe not," she said as we came to the car. "But maybe that isn't so bad. 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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Hurt #Boys #Car

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Mean #Way #Surprising

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

#Life #Ocean #Sea

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

#Past #Remember #Forget

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Life #Death #Thinking

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Strong #Effort #Knees

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Love #Inspirational #Strong

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

#People #Weak #Accepting

But you don’t have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.” “You don’t have to assume the worst about everyone, either. The world isn’t always out to get you.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Giving #Doubt #Benefits

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

#Love #Heart #Fate

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Numbers #Long #Lines

It wasn't about being happy or unhappy. I just didn't want to be me anymore.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Divorce #Heartfelt #Unhappy

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

#Fall #Ponds #Raindrops

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Life #Choices #Looks

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

#Self Esteem #Believe #Stronger

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Believe #Eye #Waiting

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Relationship #Girlfriend #Scare

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Moving On #Letting Go #Let It Go

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

#Forever #Enjoy Life #Alive

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Relationship #Mom #Children

Silence is so freaking loud
-- Sarah Dessen

#Inspirational #Silence #Loud

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Nice #Mean #Worry

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Disappointment #World #Shifting

Sometimes a question can hurt more than an answer.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Hurt #Answers #Sometimes

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Girl #Baby #Warrior

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

#Long #Firsts #Said

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

#People #Sometimes #Reason

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Song #Strong #World

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.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Inspirational #Life #Thinking

one word could change the whole world
-- Sarah Dessen

#World

Too many locks, not enough keys.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Life #Keys #Locks

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

#Differences #Timing #Hours

Told you. Everything sounds better in the car wash.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Car #Sound

nothing is guaranteed.... So don't be afraid. Be alive.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Alive

You punched him by accident.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Accidents

You know, when you think about it, that’s kind of a weird thing. I mean it’s meant to be sympathetic, right? But it’s kind of not. Like you’re telling the person there’s nothing unique about what they’re saying I considered this as a couple of kids on Rollerblades whizzed past, hockey sticks over their shoulders. “Yeah,” I said, finally, “but you could also look at it the other way. Like no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Couple #Mean #Kids

and I wondered if, in the end, this is how all disputes are settled, with a shared silence as things become equal. You take something from me, I take something from you. We all want balance, one way or another.
-- Sarah Dessen

#Silence #Balance #Want

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

#Thinking #Differences #Easy