Quotes from Sarah Dessen

Maybe it was just part of growing up with someone. Once you have a rhythm and stay with it long enough, it's not hard to find again.

Change is inevitable, though, he replied. As is disappointment. Best to get used to it now.

The only thing I can't stand more than seeing something done wrong is seeing it done slowly.

I think she loves him, Lissa said. And love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you. Love is an excuse to put up with shit that you shouldn't, I replied

When you have a kid, you sign on for the whole package: good, bad, everything in between. you can't just dip in and out, picking and choosing the parts you want and quitting when it's not perfect.

Because anyone that can make you feel that bad about yourself is toxic.

Together, we looked down at the tiny house, the sole thing on this vast, flat surface. Like the only person living on the moon. It could be either lonely or peaceful, depending on how you looked at it. It's a start, I said.

Life isn't only about the big moments whether they be good or bad. Maybe it's about the small things that stretch out to strengthen the most tenuous bound.

Some things you don't have to tell. Some things, between sisters, are understood.

I planned my whole future around Adam, she said now, quietly. And now I have nothing. No, I told her, now you just don't have Adam. There's a big difference, Lissa. You just can't see it yet.

So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out – out of earshot, out of the house – even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.

Sometimes you dont even want to think aout what people are doing with their groceries.

But it's important to acknowledge that while we may make mistakes, in the long run, we may also learn from them.

Only a real asshole takes liberties with someone else's car stereo. That's serious.

Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening.

It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.

In any moment, there were so many chances for paths to cross and people to clash, come together, or do any number of things in between. It was amazing we could live at all, knowing all that could occur purely by chance. But what was the alternative?

I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.

It's a choice, Annabel. And if you make the wrong one, you have only yourself to blame when there are consequences.

Again, it occurred to me how weird it was to be permanent in a place that to everyone else was only temporary. Like I could never be sure if they were the ones who weren't real, or if I was.

It's a funny feeling, being suddenly airborne. Just as you realize it, it's over, and you're sinking.

You can make your life, or life can make you. Was it really that simple of a choice?

It's funny how one summer can change everything.

That sucks, though, Wes said finally, his voice low. You're just setting yourself up to fail, because you'll never get everything perfect. Says who? He just looked at me. The world, he said, gesturing all around us, as if this party, this deck encompassed it all. The universe. There's just no way. And why would you want everything to be perfect, anyway? I don't want everything to be perfect, I said. Just me, I thought. Somehow. I just want—