Quotes from Sarah Dessen

My mother has always been the point I calibrated myself against. In knowing where she was, I could always locate myself, as well. These months she'd been gone, I felt like I'd been floating, loose and boundaryless, but now that I knew where she was, I kept waiting for a kind of certainty to kick in. It didn't. Instead, I was more unsure than ever, stuck between this new life and the one I'd left behind.

If there's one thing I've learned in the last few months, it's that sometimes you just have to close your eyes and jump.

It doesn't matter, anyway, why you like me. Just that you do.

Macon: "It's true. And if that doesn't work, use the Jedi Mind Trick. But only if you really have to." Halley: "The what?" Macon: "The Jedi Mind Trick." He looked at me. "Didn't you ever see Star Wars?

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

You get what you give, but also what you're willing to take. The night before, I'd offered up my hand. Now, if I held on, there was no telling what it was possible to recieve in return.

I am still the center sister. But I see it differently now. There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.

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.

Okay. Enough. I got out of the closet, brushing myself off, then turned around to face her. This is happening. So you need to go downstairs, face your fears, and make the best of it, and everything will be okay. She narrowed her eyes at me. When did you suddenly become so positive? Just get out of there.

call it chicken salad

I wondered again why the right thing always seemed to be met with so much resistance, when you'd think it would be the easier path. You had to fight to be virtuous...

And I felt a sudden whirl in my head, knowing this leap was inevitable, that I wasn't just standing on the cliff, toes poking over, but already in mid-air.

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.

When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a coloring book, with the inside not yet completed. All the standard features were there. but the colors, the zigzags and plaids, the bits and pieces that made up me, Halley, weren't yet in place. Scarlett's vibrant reds and golds helped some, but I was still waiting.

It is kind of hard to hold a lot in. But for me… it's sometimes even harder to let it out.

Life is full of screwups, he said, chucking another paper at the split-level before taking the corner. You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existence.

This is a 911? You know you only text that when someone is dead or dying. You scared the crap out of me.

That's the thing, though. You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.

It takes so little to change everything. If you really thought about it, it would scare you to death.

You know, I told him,if you don't know how to eat a cupcake, that's nothing to be ashamed of. Now he did smile. I know how to eat a cupcake. Sure you do. I do, he said. I just don't want one of those. Yeah? Prove it.

It was a weird kind of loneliness, feeling that some of my closest friends didn't actually know I existed.

You don't have to make things harder then they have to be just to prove a point.

He wasn't what I'd thought he was; maybe he never had been. I wasn't what I'd thought I was, either.

A thump thump thump noise that was so unfamiliar, and yet I couldn't quite place it. But I knew it. It was---Mmm-hmmm, Monica murmured, just as Wes came view into the path. He was running, his pace quick and steady. He was in shorts, his shirt off, staring ahead as he passed. His back was tan and gleaming with sweat. God god! she said finally, fanning her face with her hand, I've seen it a million times but it just never gets old. Never.