Quotes from Sarah Dessen

It doesn't matter whether you're the one having to douse a flame or helplessly watching it sputter. Either way, it goes out eventually.

I didn't pretend to know Eli at all, but even so, I'd noticed that his manner was slightly hard to read. It was something in the way he talked that made it difficult to tell whether he was kidding or serious or what. This bothered me. Or intrigued me. Or both.

But I'm kind of used to being invisible," I continued. "So any kind of attention makes me nervous.

I can still see Boo sitting there on the floor, cross-legged, holding my Ken and watching my face as she tried to make me see that between my mother'sPTA and Boo's strange ways there was a middle ground that began here with my Barbie, Sab-rina,and led right to me. She can be anything, Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled face so solemn, as if she knew she was the first to tell me. And so can you.

She'd wanted so much for me: the moon and more. But maybe, right now, the moon was enough.

Norman was never one for exactness, exactly.

Todo eso por una palabra? le preguntó Jess. Una palabra, contestó Ted, completamente serio, puede cambiar el mundo entero

Hay un momento en la vida en el que el mundo se calla y lo único que queda es tu propio corazón. Así que más vale que aprendas cómo suena. Si no, nunca entenderás lo que está diciendo.

Restoring order of my personal universe suddenly seemed imperative, as I refolded my T-shirts, stuffed the toes of my shoes with tissue paper, and arranged all the bills in my secret stash box facing the same way, instead of tossed in sloppy and wild, as if by my evil twin. All week, I kept making lists and crossing things off them, ending each day with a sense of great accomplishment eclipsed only by complete and total exhaustion.

In that distant, hopeful way unreal things can be.

And now she was found, no longer lost. Like a bag I'd given up for good suddenly reappearing in the middle of the night on my doorstep, packed for a journey I'd long ago forgotten. It was odd, considering I'd gotten accustomed to her being nowhere and anywhere, to finally know where my mother was. An exact location, pinpointed. Like she'd crossed over from my imagination, where I'd created a million different lives for her, back into this one.

When she finally finished a few minutes later, it was hard to tell if she was even aware that the crowds had thinned... Watching them, I thought again of how we can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.

What was it like to be so confident even in your failings that you weren't the least bit bothered when other people pointed them out? I was almost envious.

When you only had words, you had to make up for things, say what you might not need to otherwise.

Please God, I'm begging you

Maybe it was a stupid exercise, and you couldn't grow things in winter. But there was something I liked about he idea of those seeds, buried so deep, having at least a chance to emerge. Even if you couldn't see it beneath the surface, molecules were bonding, energy pushing up slowly, as something worked so hard, all alone, to grow.

There's something just obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.

The thing is, Rolly said, 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.

So I pulled back from everything and everyone I'd known....I realized I'd been changing even before we started moving,that my reinvention began when I was still in the most familiar of places. Once the setting was totally new,though, I finally could be,as well.

Live day by day.

everyone is good at heart.

It's never something huge that changes everything, but instead the tinniest of details,irrevocably tweaking the balance of the universe while your're busy focusing on the bigger picture.

There were so many times during those years, though, as we moved from one house to another, that I would find myself thinking about my sister. Usually it was late at night, when I couldn"t sleep, and I"d try to picture her in her dorm room forty-odd miles and a world away. I wondered if she was happy, what it was like out there. And if maybe, just maybe, she ever thought of me.

Life is long. Just because you don't get your chance right when you want or expect it doesn't mean it won't come.