Top 500 Sarah Dessen Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “And for one second, it was like I could feel the timing clicking together, finally pieces falling into place.”

— Sarah Dessen

152. “I wasn’t ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn’t that I wasn’t right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn’t right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn’t come easy for, someone like me.”

— Sarah Dessen

153. “I think I’m way too much of a control freak to co-author anything with anyone. I have a hard enough time writing with myself! I admire people that can do it, but it’s not for me.”

— Sarah Dessen

154. “Only a weak person needed someone else around all the time.”

— Sarah Dessen

155. “I was actually kind of a hot mess in high school. I did a lot of things in high school I’m not proud of. I wasn’t a good student and I wasn’t particularly a good daughter. I wasn’t very engaged.”

— Sarah Dessen

156. “You should never be surprised when someone treats you with respect, you should expect it.”

— Sarah Dessen

157. “But you only get so many do-overs in this life, so many chances to, if not change your past, alter your future.”

— Sarah Dessen

158. “Told you. Everything sounds better in the car wash.”

— Sarah Dessen

159. “I was used to being invisible. People rarely saw me, and if they did, they never looked close. I wasn’t shiny and charming like my brother, stunning and graceful like my mother, or smart and dynamic like my friends. That’s the thing, though. You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.”

— Sarah Dessen

160. “It’s not always so simple, Haven. Sometimes there isn’t a good guy and a bad guy. Sometimes even the ones you want to believe turn out to be liars.”

— Sarah Dessen

161. “But if something was really important, fate made sure it somehow came back to you and gave you another chance.”

— Sarah Dessen

162. “I had this wild thought that he was the only one in all this chaos who was just like me, and that was comforting and profound all at once.”

— Sarah Dessen

163. “Life has a way of disregarding even your best intentions.”

— Sarah Dessen

164. “Sometimes it seems safer to hold it all in, where the only person who can judge is yourself.”

— Sarah Dessen

165. “There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your heart.”

— Sarah Dessen

166. “Everything looks different when you’re older, not staring up at the world but down upon it.”

— Sarah Dessen

167. “It’s not always easy being her daughter.? I think,? she said, ’sometimes it’s hard no matter whose daughter you are.”

— Sarah Dessen

168. “She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.”

— Sarah Dessen

169. “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.”

— Sarah Dessen

170. “I wasn’t ready for this, but then I probably never would be, and this year, like so much else, wouldn’t wait. I had no choice but to get out of my car, with everyone watching and begin in earnest, alone. So I did.”

— Sarah Dessen

171. “You can’t just turn your heart off like a faucet; you have to go to the source and dry it out, drop by drop.”

— Sarah Dessen

172. “There were endless ways to spend your days, I knew that, none of them right or wrong. But given the chance for a real do-over, another way around, who would say no?”

— Sarah Dessen

173. “She fell, she hurt, she felt. She lived. And for all the tumble of her experiences, she still had hope. Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you would never know.”

— Sarah Dessen

174. “Maybe we were all destined to just keep doing the same stupid things, over and over again, never really learning a single thing.”

— Sarah Dessen

175. “Why does she have wings?? So she can fly.”

— Sarah Dessen

176. “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.”

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

178. “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.”

— Sarah Dessen

179. “Don’t give me no rotten tomato, ’cause all I ever wanted was your sweet potato.”

— Sarah Dessen

180. “Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.”

— Sarah Dessen

181. “Being a star requires risk-taking shoes.”

— Sarah Dessen

182. “And trying to break it down this way, to minor and major offenses, maybes and what-ifs, was like arguing over the origin of cracks in a broken egg. It was done. How it happened didn’t matter anymore.”

— Sarah Dessen

183. “If something doesn’t work exactly right, or maybe needs some special treatment, you don’t just throw it away. Everything can’t be fully operational all the time. Sometimes, we need to have the patience to give something the little nudge it needs.”

— Sarah Dessen

184. “It’s the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth.”

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

187. “You didn’t fail. You just opted out. There’s a difference.”

— Sarah Dessen

188. “It was amazing how you could get so far from where you’d planned, and yet find it was exactly were you needed to be.”

— Sarah Dessen

189. “But if everything was always smooth and perfect, you’d get too used to that, you know? You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you’ll never really enjoy it when things go right.”

— Sarah Dessen

190. “I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well.”

— Sarah Dessen

191. “I don’t get it,? Caroline said, bemused. ‘She’s the only one with wings. Why is that?’ There were so many questions in life. You couldn’t ever have all the answers. But I knew this one. It’s so she can fly,? I said. Then I started to run.”

— Sarah Dessen

192. “Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine.”

— Sarah Dessen

193. “Relationships dont always make sense. Especially from the outside.”

— Sarah Dessen

194. “I’d chosen instead to just change my route, go miles out of the way, as if avoiding it would make it go away once and for all.”

— Sarah Dessen

195. “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. Fate doesn’t punch a time clock or consult a schedule.”

— Sarah Dessen

196. “Whenever something great happens, you’re always kind of poised for the universe to correct itself.”

— Sarah Dessen

197. “Call it crazy, or just chicken salad.”

— Sarah Dessen

198. “I was so scared about being discovered, but nobody came. Nobody heard. In my own ears, though, my sobs sounded primal and scary, like something I would have turned off if I’d been able to.”

— Sarah Dessen

199. “You’re not a sucker. You’re just nice. You give people the benefit of the doubt.”

— Sarah Dessen

200. “I’d only met him once, at the mall. He was tall, with a big floppy shock of blond hair he was always getting out of his face by jerking his head suddenly to the side, whiplash-style. Rina found this incredibly sexy. It made me nervous. – Caitlin about Jeff.”

— Sarah Dessen