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

302. “It’s nice to have options even if you can’t take them.”

— Sarah Dessen

303. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

305. “This was just one night, one chance to vary and see where it took me. The fireflies were probably already out: maybe it wasn’t just a season or a time but a whole world I’d forgotten. I’d never know until I stepped out into it. So I did.”

— Sarah Dessen

306. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

308. “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

309. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

313. “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

314. “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

315. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

318. “We can all be beautiful girls.”

— Sarah Dessen

319. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

323. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

328. “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

329. “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

330. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

333. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

335. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

337. “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

338. “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

339. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

342. “When you’ve never gotten love from someone, you don’t know what it might look like if it ever does appear. You look for it in everything: any bright light overhead could be a star.”

— Sarah Dessen

343. “My agent is so totally honest, which is just what every writer needs. She won’t let me sell a crappy book, even if I want to.”

— Sarah Dessen

344. “I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered.”

— Sarah Dessen

345. “I think my biggest problem, though, at least in drafts, is not repeating myself. After eight books I get worried that a character or piece of dialog might be too much like something I’ve already done. So it’s a challenge to keep it fresh.”

— Sarah Dessen

346. “The only trick was never giving more that you were willing to lose.”

— Sarah Dessen

347. “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

348. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen