Quotes from Sarah Dessen

How do you even begin to return to someone, much less convince them to do the same for you?

For me, however, it was a mix of the two, this constant push and pull. I loved it here. But I'd been in that circle and star for my entire life, and I so wanted to know what it would feel like to claim another distant spot as my own, if only for a little while. Someday.

I was thinking that maybe, by this point, I liked it better broken.

It was rare for things to be perfect and organized anyway, even with your best efforts. Embrace the messy and when things do come together just right, you'll always be pleasantly surprised.

My father's new life was progressing as planned, one neat step at a time. And I felt it, again, that same feeling I got whenever another change or shift in my life was announced to me – selling the house, Ashley's tantrums, now the baby – that need to dig in my heels and prepare myself for the next shock and its aftermath. I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.

Most girls I know would consider that wish fullfillment, not torture." I sat back, shaking my head. "Why does everyone keep saying that? Who says just because I'm a girl I'm hardwired to want to spent a hundred and eighty bucks on jeans?

Peor que los gritos? ?Mucho peor ?dijo, asintiendo con la cabeza?. Mira, en una discusión, al menos, sabes qué es lo que está pasando. O tienes una idea. El silencio es... Puede ser cualquier cosa. Es tan... ?Tan ensordecedor... ?terminé por él [...]. ?Exactamente.

Yo solo pense para mi mismo, asi subitamente, que nosotros teniamos algo en comun. Una quimica natural, si tu deseas. Y yo tenia un sentimiento que algo grande iba a pasar. A ambos. Que nosotros estabamos, de hecho, hecho para estar juntos.

There's no shame in trying to make stuff work, is how I see it. It's better than just accepting the broken." I wanted to say he was lucky he even had a choice. That for most of us, once something was busted, it was game over. I would have loved to know how it felt, just once, to have something fall apart and see options instead of endings.

Sabia que no había ninguna garantía. Ninguna manera de saber lo que vendría después para mi, o para el, o para cualquiera. Algunas cosas no duran para siempre, pero otras si. Como una buena canción, o un buen libro, o un buen recuerdo que tu puedas sacar y desplegar en tus momentos mas oscuros, oprimiendo las esquinas y mirando detenidamente, esperando que aún reconozcas a la persona que ves allí.

Most people put off my mother's erratic behavior to the fact that she was a writer, as if that just explained everything. To me that was just an excuse. I mean, brain surgeons can be crazy too, but no one says that's all right. Fortunately for my mother, I am alone in this opinion.

Some things never get that. The replay, and all. So at some point you have to make peace with it as it is, not keep waiting around for a chance to change it.

In the last few weeks, I had changed. But in my mind, those changes had been for the better. I was finally getting over things, stepping over the careful box I'd drawn around myself all those months ago.

Sometimes love can be an ugly thing.

Sometimes even the shortest distance can be impossible to navigate, whether you went road or shore or some other route.

He took the mess that was Macbeth and fixed it, and I wonder if he might, in some small way, be able to do the same for me.

And in that moment, if only for that moment, we were right where we were supposed to be.

It was Isabel's main accessory as she dashed in late to work, always with two or three CDs, usually new, tucked under her arm. At night, when I crawled out on my rooftop, it was what I heard first

It's a dominance thing, Lissa chimed in. Like dogs. He was making clear to you that he is the alpha dog. I looked at her. I mean, you're the alpha dog, she said quickly. But he doesn't know that yet. He's testing you. I don't want to be the alpha dog, I grumbled. I don't want to be a dog, period.

He thinks he can fix anything. And if he can't fix it, he can at least do something with the pieces of what's broken.

Sometimes there isn't a good guy or a bad guy. Sometimes even the ones you want to believe turn out to be liars.

She was looking right at me, shaking her head, and I told myself she was wrong, so wrong, even as she spoke. "You're a goner.

You first learn truth, once it's with you, it never really goes away.

I've seen what commitment leads to, and it isn't pretty. Going in is the easy part. It's the endings that suck.