Top 500 Sarah Dessen Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.”

— Sarah Dessen

402. “With my mom, when someone was gone, they were gone. She didn’t waste another minute thinking about them, and neither should you.”

— Sarah Dessen

403. “Maybe it was just part of growing up with someone. Once you have a rhythm and stay with it long enough, it’s not hard to find again.”

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

406. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

409. “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

410. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

412. “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

413. “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

414. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

415. “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

416. “As if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.”

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

418. “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

419. “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

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 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

422. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

423. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

425. “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

426. “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

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

427. “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

Featured in: Reading Quotes

428. “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

429. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

431. “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

432. “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

433. “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

434. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

438. “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

439. “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

440. “It’s always been hard to call myself a writer. I think a part of me still thinks it’s too good to be true.”

— Sarah Dessen

441. “I wondered if it was really because he cared about me, or if now I was just another challenge.”

— Sarah Dessen

442. “How it felt to have the world moving beneath me, a hand gripping mine, knowing if I fell, at least I wouldn’t do it alone.”

— Sarah Dessen

443. “I thought of all the times we’d been together, how I kept coming closer, then retreating, while he stayed right where he was. A constant in a world where few, if any, really existed.”

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

445. “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

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

— Sarah Dessen

447. “Pieces and parts were always easier to process. The full picture, the entire story, was another thing entirely. But you just never knew. Sometimes, people could surprise you.”

— Sarah Dessen

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

448. “I always thought I was different.”

— Sarah Dessen

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

— Sarah Dessen

450. “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