Quotes from Sarah Dessen

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.

I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell anyone. As long as I didn't say it aloud, it wasn't real.

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.

But I think, personally, that it would be worse to have been alone all that time. Sure, maybe I would have protected my heart from some things, but would that really have been better? To hold myself apart because I was too scared that something might no be forever?

Everything hurt. I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to the street, and waited. What for, I didn't know. To be rescued. Or found. But no one came. All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.

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

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

There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn't sure I had it in me to keep looking back.

It was so risky and so scary, and yet at the same time, so beautiful. Maybe the truth was, 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 -if not impossible- to lose.

With my mom, when someone was gone, they were gone. She didn't waste another minute thinking about them, and neither should you.

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?

I'd done the right thing. I always did. It just would have been nice if someone had noticed.

Why does she have wings?' So she can fly.

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 was unrealistic to expect to be constantly in the happiest place. In real life, you're lucky just to be always somewhere nearby.

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

She said writting novels was like childbirth: if you truly remembered how awful it got, you'd never do it again.

I know there were no guaratnees. No way of knowing what came next for me, or him, or anything. Some things dont last forever, but some things do. Like a great song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down the corners and peering close, hoping you still see the person you see there . . . That was the thing, you just never knew. Right now, though, I wanted not to think forward or backward, but only to lose myself in the words.

Just because a person isn't talking about something doesn't mean it's not on their mind. Often, in fact, it's why they won't speak of it.

Just because something's damaged doesn't mean it shouldn't be treated with respect.' 'Ad,' Wallace said, 'it's a coffee table, not an orphan.

I had this wild thought that he was the only one in all this chaos who was just like me, and that was comforting and profound all at once.

The truth was, there was no way everything could be the Best. Sometimes, when it came to events and people, it had to be okay to just be .

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.

Of course it hurts, she grumbled, tipping my head further back. Life sucks. Get over it