Quotes from Sarah Dessen

He doesn't love me. He might still love me as I was at fifteen, when I didn't know any better. When I trusted everyone. I'm not that person any more. He's just a boy. He was the first to really hurt me, but he's just a boy. There were a lot of them.

So this had been all I wanted, a boy who understood how I felt. Now, though, I sometimes wished for more.

Yeah, he agreed, but when you go for Squeeze Serve with someone, it's a safe zone. What's said there, stays there. I looked at him. I think that's Las Vegas. That, too.

Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really about...I wished it would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, that was this: it was happening. Right then...and every moment afterwards.

There's no right or wrong in music, you know? Just everything in between.

I always thought I was different.

Well, here we are, Ethan said. The end of the world. I smiled, turning slightly to take in the full view. It's different to what I expected. The big stuff always is, he said.

How fast were you? Wes asked me. I said, Not that fast. You mean you couldn't... fly? he said, smiling at me.

After all with me & Marshall, it had never been about words or conversation, where there was too much to be risked or lost. Here, though, in the quiet pressed against each other, this felt familiar to me. And it was nice to let someone get close again, even if it was just for a little while.

It was as familiar to me as a song I'd been hearing my whole life, covered by various people but the basic tune the same.

Make your choices well, my mom had said. It was what she thought she hadn't done, what she hoped above everything I'd do differently. On the flip side, though, there was Clyde, telling me that there were second chances, even-and especially- when you've given up all hope of them. But maybe, when a life and summer was going so fast, you couldn't wait for fate to punch the time card. You had to do it yourself.

People are not uniform Emaline. There is no such thing as any other girl. So stop holding yourself to some ridiculous high standard, would you please?

If there was a way to recognize something you'd never seen but still knew by heart, I felt it as I looked at his face. Finally, someone understood.

To summer, and to us.

Mayonnaise is a lot like men, it can make everything much better, adding flavor and ease to your life. Or, it can just be sticky and gross and make you nauseous- Keeping the Moon

I eased back on my elbows, tilting my head back to look up at the sky, which was pinkish, streaked with red. This was the time we knew best, that stretch of day going from dusk to dark. It seemed like we were always waiting for nighttime here. I could feel the trampoline easing up and down, moved by our own breathing, bringing us in small increments up and back from the sky as the colors faded, slowly, and the stars began to show themselves.

I could pretend otherwise, pushing it out of sight and hopefully out of mind. But if something was really important, fate made sure it somehow came back to you and gave you another chance.

It wasn't like I was some expert on the meaning of being supportive. Was it being loyal even against your better judgement? Or, like Olivia, was it making your displeasure known from the start, even when someone didn't want to hear it?

So I just decided to relax into it, bumpy and crazy as it might be, and try for once to just go along for the ride.

The silence wasn't like the ones I'd known lately, though: it wasn't empty as much as chosen. There's a entirely different feel to quiet when you're with some-one else, and at any moment it could be broken. Like the difference between a pause and an ending.

This could be a big mistake... but it was already happening. I was not a girl with all the information, but I knew one thing. If this was my forever, I didn't want to spend it here.

Growing up means :propelling yourself forward into whatever lies ahead, one turn of the wheel at a time.

Life didn't begin cleanly, and it surely never ended that way. We were blessed with whatever we had in the middle. It made sense that it be messy, too.

As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.