Quotes from Sarah Dessen

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.

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

I have to admit, an unrequited love is so much better than a real one. I mean, it's perfect... As long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.

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.

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.

funny how a beautiful song could tell such a sad story

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!

I was beginning to see, though, that the unknown wasn't always the greatest thing to fear. The people who know you best can be risker, because the words they say and things they think have the potential to be not only scary but true, as well.

Sometimes, we just have to be happy with what people can offer us. Even if it's not what we want, at least it's something.

So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story.

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.

Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that. It's a lie. It's just something that people say they'll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said 'friendly' relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it's like breaking up all over again. But messier.

An ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last word.

Life can be long or short, it all depends on how you choose to live it. it's like forever, always changing. for any of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. you can never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count. what you have to decide is how you want your life to be. if your forever was ending tomorrow, is this how you'd want to have spent it?

Friends are honest with each other. Even if the truth hurts. -Maggie

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.

If this was my forever, I wouldn't want to spend it here.

Two a.m.' He swallowed, then said, You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they're asleep or it's cold or you need to be bailed out of jail...they'll come for you. It's like, the highest level of friendship.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

You can't make any one person your world. The trick is to take what each can give you and build a world from it.