Top 500 Sarah Dessen Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “The fate of your heart is your choice and no one else gets a vote.”

— Sarah Dessen

252. “I tried to hold myself apart, showing only what I wanted, doling out bits and pieces of who I was. But that only works out for so long. Eventually, even the smallest fragments can’t help but, make a whole.”

— Sarah Dessen

253. “Again, it occurred to me how weird it was to be permanent in a place that to everyone else was only temporary. Like I could never be sure if they were the ones who weren’t real, or if I was.”

— Sarah Dessen

254. “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.”

— Sarah Dessen

255. “And guys don’t get attached, guys don’t give themselves over completely, and guys lie. That’s why they should be handled with great trepidation, not trusted, and held at arm’s length whenever possible.”

— Sarah Dessen

256. “See, Colie, it’s all about understanding. We’re all worth something.”

— Sarah Dessen

257. “Love can make up for a lot.”

— Sarah Dessen

258. “And that was it. All this buildup to a great leap, and I didn’t fall or fly. Instead I found myself back on the edge of the cliff, blinking, wondering if I’d ever jumped at all. It’s not supposed to be like this.”

— Sarah Dessen

259. “None of it meant anything, and all of it was important.”

— Sarah Dessen

260. “I had stepped into his arms, showing him my raw, broken heart.”

— Sarah Dessen

261. “I mean, it’s impossible to fake anything if you’ve already seen the other person in a way they’d never choose for you to. You can’t go back from that.”

— Sarah Dessen

262. “That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.”

— Sarah Dessen

263. “Then I’d crawl back into bed, smelling her all around me, and tell myself that next time, I would lock that window. But I never did.”

— Sarah Dessen

264. “It’s not forever’, she’d said, but to my mother, it might as well have been. She had make her choice, and this was it, where she felt safe, in a world she could, for the most part, control.”

— Sarah Dessen

265. “Maybe I’d just figured out there were some things you were better off not knowing.”

— Sarah Dessen

266. “Sawooon.”

— Sarah Dessen

267. “I used to worry I was entirely uninteresting, but the truth is I think if my life was more exciting I’d never have any time to write.”

— Sarah Dessen

268. “That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened-good, bad, or anywhere in between-it was always, if nothing else, all your own.”

— Sarah Dessen

269. “You only really fall apart in front of the people you know can piece you back together.”

— Sarah Dessen

270. “What did it feel like, I wondered, to love someone that much? So much that you couldn’t even control yourself when they came close, as if you might just break free of whatever was holding you and throw yourself at them with enough force to easily overwhelm you both.”

— Sarah Dessen

271. “I mean, to me, freaking out is different. More of a running away, not telling anyone what’s wrong, slowly simmering until you burst kind of thing.”

— Sarah Dessen

272. “If you could just be nice, then you wouldn’t have to worry about arguments at all. but being nice wasn’t as easy as it seemed, especially when the rest of the world could be so mean.”

— Sarah Dessen

273. “Fine just fine.”

— Sarah Dessen

274. “Teaching was great for me, because I got to show people how writing can really change the way you see not only yourself but the world.”

— Sarah Dessen

275. “In a way, I was almost happy to see her. The worst part of me, out in the flesh. Blinking back at me in the dim light, daring me to call her a name other than my own.”

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

277. “I trailed off and he didn’t push me to finish. I was finding that I liked that.”

— Sarah Dessen

278. “As far as I was concerned, we’d come to a draw: I hadn’t wanted to come, and she didn’t want me to leave. We were even. But I knew my mother wouldn’t see it that way. Lately, we didn’t seem to see anything the same.”

— Sarah Dessen

279. “This is personal, she’d said. Real. This moment was too, even if you couldn’t see it at first glance. It was fake on the outside, but so true within. You only had to look, really look to tell.”

— Sarah Dessen

280. “An ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last word.”

— Sarah Dessen

281. “You bought me some forks. And knives. And spoons. Because you love me!”

— Sarah Dessen

282. “That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about.”

— Sarah Dessen

283. “I’ve always known who I am. I might not work perfectly, or be like them, but that’s okay. I know I work in my own way.”

— Sarah Dessen

284. “He was the closest thing I’d ever had to something, or someone, that mattered. But in the end, close didn’t count. You were either in, or you weren’t.”

— Sarah Dessen

285. “Like a word on a page that you’ve printed and read a million times, that suddenly looks strange or wrong, foreign. And you feel scared for a second, like you’ve lost something, even if you’re not sure what it is.”

— Sarah Dessen

286. “It doesn’t matter, anyway, why you like me. Just that you do.”

— Sarah Dessen

287. “Sometimes love can be an ugly thing.”

— Sarah Dessen

288. “Maybe marriage, like life, is’nt only about the big moments, whether they be good or bad. Maybe it’s all the small things – like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day – that stretches out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.”

— Sarah Dessen

289. “You could just tell when a person belonged somewhere. That is something you can’t fake, no matter how hard you try.”

— Sarah Dessen

290. “No, no, no to Tallyho.”

— Sarah Dessen

291. “There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.”

— Sarah Dessen

292. “But I’d long ago learned not to be picky in farewells. They weren’t guaranteed or promised. You were lucky, more than blessed, if you got a good-bye at all.”

— Sarah Dessen

293. “My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest.”

— Sarah Dessen

294. “If only you could really use a fail-proof system to know who was worth keeping and who needed to be thrown away. It would make it so much easier to move through the world, picking and choosing what connections to make, or whether to make any at all.”

— Sarah Dessen

295. “I wasn’t very happy in high school: it was a confusing and sort of sad time for me.”

— Sarah Dessen

296. “You can’t make any one person your world. The trick is to take what each can give you and build a world from it.”

— Sarah Dessen

297. “But that was the problem with having the answers. It was only after you gave them that you realized they sometimes weren’t what people wanted to hear.”

— Sarah Dessen

298. “Clearly, sharing something could take you a long way, or at least to a different place than you’d planned. Like a friendship or a family, or even jsut alone on a curb on a Saturday, trying to get your bearings as best you can.”

— Sarah Dessen

299. “It’s a choice, Annabel. And if you make the wrong one, you have only yourself to blame when there are consequences.”

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen