Top 500 Sarah Dessen Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

304. “Are you crazy? Flirting with Eli Stock in front of Belissa Norwood, in Belissa Norwood’s house, while eating Belissa Norwood’s cupcakes?”

— Sarah Dessen

305. “You knew the truth all along, Colie. That’s all matters. You knew.”

— Sarah Dessen

306. “And I felt a sudden whirl in my head, knowing this leap was inevitable, that I wasn’t just standing on the cliff, toes poking over, but already in mid-air.”

— Sarah Dessen

307. “People get mad Annabel. Its not the end of the world.”

— Sarah Dessen

308. “But there was something I liked about the idea of those seeds buried so deep having at least a chance to emerge.”

— Sarah Dessen

309. “This felt right. Not just leaving, but how I was doing it. Without regret, without second guessing. And with Wes right there, holding the door open for me as I walked out into the light.”

— Sarah Dessen

310. “Right now, though, I wanted not to think forward or backward, but only to lose myself in the words.”

— Sarah Dessen

311. “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

312. “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

313. “Nothing like being scolded by a hippie.”

— Sarah Dessen

314. “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

315. “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

316. “She knew I could tell with one glance, one look, one simple instant. It was her eyes. Despite the thick makeup, they were still dark-rimmed., haunted, and sad. Most of all though, they were familiar. The fact that we were in front of hundreds of strangers changed nothing at all. I’d spent a summer with those same eyes-scared, lost, confused-staring back at me. I would have known them anywhere.”

— Sarah Dessen

317. “If there was a way to recognize something you’d never seen but still knew by heart, I felt it as I looked at his face. Finally, someone understood.”

— Sarah Dessen

318. “What do you do when you finally hear everything you’ve always thought said aloud?”

— Sarah Dessen

319. “I have SO many books I didn’t sell. Some my agent rejected outright, others made it all the way to my editor to be turned away. Not everything is a winner, which is tough when you’ve devoted eight or nine months of your life to something.”

— Sarah Dessen

320. “You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It’s always been yes when it comes to you.”

— Sarah Dessen

321. “You get what you give, but also what you’re willing to take.”

— Sarah Dessen

322. “Even if you couldn’t see it beneath the surface, molecules were bonding, energy pushing up slowly, as something worked do hare, all alone to grow.”

— Sarah Dessen

323. “I think when you’re a beginning author with any publishing company, there’s only so much they can put behind you.”

— Sarah Dessen

324. “We can all be beautiful girls.”

— Sarah Dessen

325. “Whenever you made a choice, especially one you’d been resisting, it always affected everything else, some in big ways, like a tremor beneath your feet, others in so tiny a shift you hardly noticed a change at all. But it was happening.”

— Sarah Dessen

326. “But those words were only the middle of the story. There was a beginning here, too.”

— Sarah Dessen

327. “It took a lot of work to be perfect.”

— Sarah Dessen

328. “I didn’t trot my pain out to show around. I kept it better hidden than anyone. I did.”

— Sarah Dessen

329. “The kind who live for music and are constantly seeking it out, anywhere they can. Who can’t imagine a life without it. They’re enlightened.”

— Sarah Dessen

330. “It seemed like this day could go in so many directions, like a spiderweb shooting out toward endless possibilities.”

— Sarah Dessen

331. “Everyone had a forever, but given a choice, this would be mine. The one that began in this moment, with Wes, in a kiss that took my breath away, then gave it back – leaving me astounded, amazed, and most of all, alive.”

— Sarah Dessen

332. “I think I’m too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.”

— Sarah Dessen

333. “When he stopped walking and kissed me a few minutes later, it was like time had stopped, with the air, my heart, and the world all so still. And it was this I remembered every other time I was with Marshall.”

— Sarah Dessen

334. “This was always the problem with my mother and me, I suddenly realized. There were so many things we thought we agreed on, but anythign can have two meanings. Like sides of a coin, it just matters how it falls.”

— Sarah Dessen

335. “It wasn’t like I was some expert on the meaning of being supportive. Was it being loyal even against your better judgement? Or, like Olivia, was it making your displeasure known from the start, even when someone didn’t want to hear it?”

— Sarah Dessen

336. “My first signing was at my hometown independent bookstore and everyone in the world came. It was so nice. My family was there, my parents, everybody I worked with, all my friends. So I had this great first reading with a like hundred people there.”

— Sarah Dessen

337. “Because maybe, the best of times were yet to come. You never knew.”

— Sarah Dessen

338. “Isn’t that the way everything begins? A night, a love, a once and for all.”

— Sarah Dessen

339. “Everything always gets crazy at the end. You just have to keep going, regardless of how awful it gets. So that’s what I do.”

— Sarah Dessen

340. “It was like that part of my life, was just gone. It was almost too easy, for something I once thought had meant everything.”

— Sarah Dessen

341. “Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. it doesn’t just catch up: it overtakes, blotting out the future, the landscape, the very sky, until there is no path left except that which leads through it, the only one that can ever get you home.”

— Sarah Dessen

342. “A lot can change between planning something and actually doing it. But maybe all that really matters is that anything is different at all.”

— Sarah Dessen

343. “There comes a point when things are undeniable and can’t be hidden any longer. Even from yourself.”

— Sarah Dessen

344. “It’s about the courage to go for what you want, not just what you think you need. Sometimes we don’t even know what that is.”

— Sarah Dessen

345. “I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.”

— Sarah Dessen

346. “For two hours I’d felt myself stretching tighter and tighter, like a rubber band pulled to the point of snapping. And now, I could feel the smaller, weaker part of myself beginning to fray, tiny bits giving way before the big break.”

— Sarah Dessen

347. “All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she’d left behind.”

— Sarah Dessen

348. “I waited. Because with Eli, he was never trying to get you to finish for him. He always knew where he was going, even if it took a little while to get there.”

— Sarah Dessen

349. “I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, and everyone was crying.”

— Sarah Dessen

350. “Remy: Did you really believe, that first day, that we were meant to be together? Dexter: You’re here, aren’t you?”

— Sarah Dessen