Sarah Dessen Quotes

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

I wondered if he ever thought of me, and hated the pang I felt when I told myself he didn't.

But it was okay not to fit in everywhere, as long as you did somewhere.

Wake up, Caitlin, Mr. Lensing had said. But what he didn't under­stand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids. I didn't care if they sang to me.All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again, pulling me upward into light,to drown.

But sometimes you lose. Nothing you can do but admit it.
-Eli

All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough by to shoulder the rest.

"So you're always honest," I said.
"Aren't you?"
"No," I told him. "I'm not."
"Well, that's good to know, I guess."
"I'm not saying I'm a liar," I told him. He raised his eyebrows. "That's not how I meant it, anyways."
"How'd you mean it, then?"
"I just...I don't always say what I feel."
"Why not?"
"Because the truth sometimes hurts," I said.
"Yeah," he said. "So do lies, though."

I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, truths and half-truths, that kept her always at arm's length, behind a closed door, miles away.

The bottom line is, what defines you isn't how many times you crash, but the number of times you get back on the bike. As long as it's one more. you're all good.

Life is full of screwups. You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existance.

Now I felt like I was drifting, sucked down by an undertow, and too far out to swim back to the shore.

But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.

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.

Duh, he said, smoothing my hair back, Venus and Earth.

Energy, he said, handing me my burrito.