Top 500 Sarah Dessen Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “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

Featured in: Reading Quotes

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

— Sarah Dessen

Featured in: Romance Quotes

353. “She took the sun when it came and the rain the same way.”

— Sarah Dessen

354. “Like I, of all people, didn’t know better than to lead a total stranger to the point where they could hurt me most, knowing how easily they’d be able to find their way back to it.”

— Sarah Dessen

355. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

356. “Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we’d found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.”

— Sarah Dessen

357. “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

358. “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

359. “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

360. “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

361. “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

Featured in: Book Quotes

362. “When you have a kid, you sign on for the whole package: good, bad, everything in between. you can’t just dip in and out, picking and choosing the parts you want and quitting when it’s not perfect.”

— Sarah Dessen

363. “And that was it; it was so easy for her. My own memories did not even belong to me. But I knew she was wrong. I had seen that comet. I knew it as well as I knew my own face, my own hands. My own heart.”

— Sarah Dessen

364. “If you’re not getting hurt, you’re not riding hard enough.”

— Sarah Dessen

365. “So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop them in midstream. But it was even worse when you knew in that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldn’t even budge.”

— Sarah Dessen

366. “But for now, I just sat there on the bed and listened to my song. The one that had been written for me by a man who knew me not at all, now sung by the one who knew me best.”

— Sarah Dessen

367. “Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.”

— Sarah Dessen

368. “This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going.”

— Sarah Dessen

369. “Never would forever, with all its meanings, be so clear and distinct as in the true, guaranteed end of the world.”

— Sarah Dessen

370. “It took a lot of work to be perfect. If you didn’t want to break a sweat, there was no point in even bothering.”

— Sarah Dessen

371. “Looking back, it seemed like it should have been harder to lose someone, or have them lose you, especially when they were in the same state, only a few towns over.”

— Sarah Dessen

372. “So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out – out of earshot, out of the house – even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.”

— Sarah Dessen

373. “If nothing else, now we knew where to find each other, even if only time would tell if either of us would ever come looking.”

— Sarah Dessen

374. “I don’t think anyone would think that an ellipsis represents doubt or anything. I think it’s more, you know, hinting at the future. What lies ahead.”

— Sarah Dessen

375. “All of my stories, they don’t come from my high school experience, but they’re definitely based on things that happened to me in high school, or things that happened to friends of mine, or things that I wish had happened to me.”

— Sarah Dessen

376. “It was like reaching for someone’s hand, then missing their fingers, or even their arm, and hitting their shoulder instead. But no matter. You hang on tight anyway.”

— Sarah Dessen

377. “Because anyone that can make you feel that bad about yourself is toxic.”

— Sarah Dessen

378. “There’s something about dancing that’s like being stripped naked; you have to be very self-confident to thrash around in public, deliberately attracting attention. I’d never been that way, even without the weight that once kept me in everyone’s eyes. Dancers were the lightest and brightest of butterflies, while girls like me stayed low, bellies scraping along the floor, and watched from there.”

— Sarah Dessen

379. “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.”

— Sarah Dessen

380. “It was like discovering that some part of you wasn’t yours at all. And it made me wonder what else I couldn’t claim.”

— Sarah Dessen

381. “But even more so, it reminded me that this was all really happening. Stanford. The end of the summer. The beginning of my real life. It was no longer just creeping up, peeking over the horizon, but instead lingering in plain sight.”

— Sarah Dessen

Featured in: Real Quotes

382. “I’ve found in my own life that if my writing isn’t going well, not much else will. It is the one constant, the key to everything else.”

— Sarah Dessen

383. “And to know me, as you have discovered, is to love me.”

— Sarah Dessen

384. “How ballsy it was to just assume you know, with one glance, the things another person could live without. As if it was the same for everyone, that simple.”

— Sarah Dessen

385. “I would miss Colby, but it wasn’t going anywhere. All the more reason why I should.”

— Sarah Dessen

386. “When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a colouring book, with the inside not yet completed.”

— Sarah Dessen

Featured in: Book Quotes

387. “If you didn’t always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it’s enough – more than enough, even – just to be there.”

— Sarah Dessen

388. “When you don’t know where you’re going, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to have more than you need.”

— Sarah Dessen

389. “I understood now. This voice, the one that had been trying to get my attention all this time, calling out to me, begging me to hear it – it wan’t Will’s. It was mine.”

— Sarah Dessen

390. “I was just stock in the middle, vague and undefined.”

— Sarah Dessen

391. “It’s so, so stupid what we do to ourselves because we’re afraid. It’s so stupid.”

— Sarah Dessen

392. “I reached up with my finger and traced the scar over my eyebrow, remembering when that was the greatest hurt I’d ever known.”

— Sarah Dessen

393. “Who knew three dots could make such a difference? Like everything else, a love or a wish or whatever, it was all in the way you read it.”

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

395. “I always tried to imagine what it would be like to open your door to find something you had given up on. maybe it had seen places you never had, been rerouted and passed through so many strange hands, but still somehow found its way back to you, all before the day even began.”

— Sarah Dessen

396. “It was a basic plot in any number of her books: girl strikes out, makes good, finds love, gets revenge. In that order. The making good and striking out part I liked. The rest would just be bonus.”

— Sarah Dessen

Featured in: Book Quotes

397. “If someone is really close with you, your getting upset or them getting upset is okay, and they don’t change because of it. It’s just part of the relationship. It happens. You deal with it.”

— Sarah Dessen

398. “You own a Tic Tac. Gum is just borrowed. – Esther.”

— Sarah Dessen

399. “Because it is so hard, in any life, to believe in what you can’t fully understand.”

— Sarah Dessen

400. “And while it is hard enough to take away something that makes a person happy it’s even more difficult when it seems like it’s the only thing.”

— Sarah Dessen