Top 500 Sarah Dessen Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

403. “But it was too early to know: there were always more pages to go, more words to be written, before the story was over.”

— Sarah Dessen

404. “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

405. “Like it takes so little not only to change something, but to make you forget the way it once was, as well.”

— Sarah Dessen

406. “I’d been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.”

— Sarah Dessen

407. “Because now, I didn’t care what they thought. It wasn’t new, this realization that I would never be like them. What was different now was that I was glad. Macy page 199.”

— Sarah Dessen

408. “As I rolled over, stretching out, my only thought was to go back to the dream I’d been having, which I couldn’t remember, other than that it had been good, in that distant, hopeful way unreal things can be.”

— Sarah Dessen

409. “Not for the first time, I wished both of us could just say what we meant. But that, like so much else, was impossible.”

— Sarah Dessen

410. “Was it really this easy, once you escaped, to just not care?”

— Sarah Dessen

411. “It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.”

— Sarah Dessen

412. “I should have told you from the start. I will let you down.”

— Sarah Dessen

413. “Being self-confident doesn’t necessarily start inside. It starts with the rest of the world and leads back to you.”

— Sarah Dessen

414. “The truth was, I wasn’t sure. But I wanted to keep believing people could change, and it was certainly easier to do so when you were in the midst of it.”

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

416. “Just like that, with one phone call, she was a daughter again.”

— Sarah Dessen

417. “There was something striking about a single key. It was like a question waiting to be answered, a whole missing a half. Useless on its own, needing something else to be truly defined.”

— Sarah Dessen

418. “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

419. “You know, feeling and action are always linked, one can’t exist without the other. It’s sort of a hippie thing.-Wes.”

— Sarah Dessen

420. “It was so weird, because usually I was totally nervous talking to guys. But Eli was different. He made me want to say more, not less. Which was maybe not a good thing.”

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

422. “Nothing happens for ages, and then all the changes come at once.”

— Sarah Dessen

423. “I wanted to tell him so. Find the right words, string them together in the ideal way, knowing that here they would have the best chance of sounding perfect.”

— Sarah Dessen

424. “That was the thing: Once, the difference between light and dark had been basic. One was good, one bad. Suddenly, though, things weren’t so clear. The dark was still a mystery, something hidden, something to be scared of, but I’d come to fear the light, too. It was where everything was revealed, or seemed to be. Eyes closed, I saw only the blackness, reminding me of this one thing, the most deep of my secrets; eyes open, there was only the world that didn’t know it, bright, inescapable, and somehow, still there.”

— Sarah Dessen

425. “We laughed ourselves silly, taking back our shared past, gently, piece by piece.”

— Sarah Dessen

426. “It was such a weird thing how a breakup stretched much wider than you expected. You didn’t just lose a person, but their entire world as well.”

— Sarah Dessen

427. “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

428. “I’ve seen what commitment leads to. Going in is the easy part. It’s the ending that sucks! -Remy.”

— Sarah Dessen

429. “Sometimes you dont even want to think aout what people are doing with their groceries.”

— Sarah Dessen

430. “As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.”

— Sarah Dessen

431. “I’m starting to think, though, that some things never get that. The replay, and all. So at some point you have to make peace with it as it is, not keep waiting for a chance to change it.”

— Sarah Dessen

432. “How do you even begin to return to someone, much less convince them to do the same for you? I had no idea. More than ever, though, right then I had to believe the answer would just come to me.”

— Sarah Dessen

433. “I just have to be super strong when it comes to my work time. Shut the browser, ignore the email alerts, and just WRITE.”

— Sarah Dessen

434. “I always thought I was different.”

— Sarah Dessen

435. “I was so thrilled that I was having a girl, because I just am so girly myself, but I think the teenage years are going to be very interesting.”

— Sarah Dessen

436. “But all I could think of was how when nothing made sense and hadn’t for ages, you just have to grab onto anything you feel sure of.”

— Sarah Dessen

437. “Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was so damned hard.”

— Sarah Dessen

438. “My books are so tame!”

— Sarah Dessen

439. “With total strangers, it had always been my policy to expect the worst. Usually they-and those that you knew best, for that matter-did not disappoint.”

— Sarah Dessen

440. “I’d been running for years: there was nothing scarier, to me, than to just be still with someone. And yet, there on that dark road, going home, I was.”

— Sarah Dessen

441. “Whether it was a song, a person, or a story, there was a lot you couldn’t know from just an excerpt, a glance, or part of a chorus.”

— Sarah Dessen

442. “Doesn’t it seem sometimes that the whole world’s uphill but at least we know the way back will be easy...”

— Sarah Dessen

443. “Everything hurt. I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to the street, and waited. What for, I didn’t know. To be rescued. Or found. But no one came. All I’d ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.”

— Sarah Dessen

444. “When you had to do something, you had to do it. And eventually, if you were lucky, you did it well.”

— Sarah Dessen

445. “This is exactly what i wanted, as commitments had never really been my thing. And it wasn’t like it was hard, either. The only trick was never giving more than you were willing to lose.”

— Sarah Dessen

446. “You can’t just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can’t plan the moment you lose your way in the first place. But standing there alone on the landing, I thought of Grandma Halley and how she’d held me close against her lap as we watched the sky together. I’d always thought I couldn’t remember, but suddenly in that moment, I closed my eyes and saw the comet, finally, brilliant and impossible, stretching above me across the sky.”

— Sarah Dessen

447. “I’m just writing what I know. I’ve never been much of a reader of fantasy, and I think you write what you, personally, enjoy reading.”

— Sarah Dessen

448. “So while it seemed like you were seeing everything, you really weren’t. Just bits and pieces that looked like a whole.”

— Sarah Dessen

449. “Eventually, it wasn’t even your dad I wanted, just anybody. Anybody at all.”

— Sarah Dessen

450. “That was the nice thing about the Spot: you could hear everything, but no one could see you.”

— Sarah Dessen