Sarah Dessen quote: "Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective."

It's okay to accept things from people. It doesn't make you weak or helpless.
SARAH DESSEN

When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a colouring book, with the inside not ...
SARAH DESSEN

But you don’t have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.”
“You don’t have to assum...
SARAH DESSEN

The best gifts come from the heart, not the store.
SARAH DESSEN

He wasn't the type for displays of affection, either verbal or not. He was disgusted by couples that...
SARAH DESSEN

Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.
SARAH DESSEN

So you're always honest," I said.
"Aren't you?"
"No," I told him. "I'm not."
"Well, t...
SARAH DESSEN

There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single f...
SARAH DESSEN

And that was it. All this buildup to a great leap, and I didn't fall or fly. Instead I found myself ...
SARAH DESSEN

You, have this whole tall, dark stranger thing going on. Not to mention the tortured artist bit.
SARAH DESSEN

But it was okay not to fit in everywhere, as long as you did somewhere.
SARAH DESSEN

Okay,' he said. He took a breath. 'What would you do, if you could do anything?'
I took a step ...
SARAH DESSEN

The choices you make now, the people you surround yourself with, they all have the potential to affe...
SARAH DESSEN

But that was the problem with having the answers. It was only after you gave them that you realized ...
SARAH DESSEN

I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not...
SARAH DESSEN

But if something was really important, fate made sure it somehow came back to you and gave you anoth...
SARAH DESSEN

But if everything was always smooth and perfect, you'd get too used to that, you know? You have to h...
SARAH DESSEN

I don't know. Just because someone's pretty doesn't mean she's decent. Or vice versa. I'm not into a...
SARAH DESSEN

I don't get it,' Caroline said, bemused. 'She's the only one with wings. Why is that?'
There we...
SARAH DESSEN

If this was my forever, I wouldn't want to spend it here.
SARAH DESSEN

the truth about forever is that it is happening right now
SARAH DESSEN

Life can be long or short, it all depends on how you choose to live it. it's like forever, always ch...
SARAH DESSEN

I have to admit, an unrequited love is so much better than a real one. I mean, it's perfect... As lo...
SARAH DESSEN

Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.
SARAH DESSEN

We'd start slow, the way we always did, because the run, and the game, could go on for awhile. Maybe...
SARAH DESSEN

What you have to decide... is how you want your life to be. If your forever was ending tomorrow, wou...
SARAH DESSEN

But I'd long ago learned not to be picky in farewells. They weren't guaranteed or promised.
Yo...
SARAH DESSEN

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It's so easy in the past tense.
SARAH DESSEN

It was just one of those things," I said, "You know, that just happen. You don't think or plan. You ...
SARAH DESSEN

What you need, what you deserve, is a guy who adores you for what you are. Who doesn't see you as a ...
SARAH DESSEN

Some people, they can't just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem ...
SARAH DESSEN

I like flaws. I think they make things interesting.
SARAH DESSEN

It's all in the view. That's what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end...
SARAH DESSEN

That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it...
SARAH DESSEN

It's just that...I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It's the ...
SARAH DESSEN

If you try anything, if you try to lose weight, or to improve yourself, or to love, or to make the w...
SARAH DESSEN

There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd bet...
SARAH DESSEN

All I'd ever wanted was to forget. but even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bit...
SARAH DESSEN

I knew, in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late: again, ...
SARAH DESSEN

Don't think or judge, just listen.
SARAH DESSEN

I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, a...
SARAH DESSEN

How it felt to have the world moving beneath me, a hand gripping mine, knowing if I fell, at least I...
SARAH DESSEN

Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, w...
SARAH DESSEN

There are some things in this world you rely on, like a sure bet. And when they let you down, shifti...
SARAH DESSEN

If you didn't love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and eve...
SARAH DESSEN

You should never be surprised when someone treats you with respect, you should expect it.
SARAH DESSEN

Life is full of screwups. You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human exist...
SARAH DESSEN

Your past is always your past. Even if you forget it, it remembers you.
SARAH DESSEN

If you expect the worst, you'll never be disappointed.
SARAH DESSEN

It shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and stru...
SARAH DESSEN

Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and a...
SARAH DESSEN

He thought about this for a second. "True. But if you never really make friends, you probably don't ...
SARAH DESSEN

Hey, and for what it's worth? Friends don't leave you alone in the woods. Friends are the ones who c...
SARAH DESSEN

You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It's not overrated. There's a reason for all those ...
SARAH DESSEN

No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to giv...
SARAH DESSEN

Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow comple...
SARAH DESSEN

I don't know," I said. "What else did you do for your first eighteen years?"
"Like I said," he ...
SARAH DESSEN

Music is a total constant. That's why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Bec...
SARAH DESSEN

Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memo...
SARAH DESSEN

I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft lan...
SARAH DESSEN

This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in ...
SARAH DESSEN

I don't lie."
"You don't lie," I repeated.
"That's what I said."
"Ever."
"Nope."...
SARAH DESSEN

for once, you believed in yourself. you believed you were beautiful and so did the rest of the world...
SARAH DESSEN

I don't live in New York or California. I'm in the grocery store, at the park with my kids, ...
SARAH DESSEN

I'm always hopeful. I feel like I'm at the prom sitting against the wall waiting for someone...
SARAH DESSEN

When I was a teen, I was never really into the captain of the football team or the student body pres...
SARAH DESSEN

It's not always easy being her daughter.'

I think,' she said, 'sometimes it's hard no ma...
SARAH DESSEN

I thought this was a cookout. You know, dogs and burgers, Tater Tots, ambrosia salad" Dexter picked ...
SARAH DESSEN

Oh, God," I said.
"No, it's Dexter," he replied, offering me his hand, which I ignored.
He...
SARAH DESSEN

What the hell," I said, pushing off the wall, ready to take off the head of whatever stupid salesper...
SARAH DESSEN

But you, fine sir." John Miller clapped Dexter on the shoulder, a bit unsteadily. "You have problems...
SARAH DESSEN

Plastic ware," he said slowly, "like knives and forks and spoons?"
I brushed a bit of dirt off ...
SARAH DESSEN

Are those the only options? Nothing or forever?
SARAH DESSEN

I just thought to my self, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural chemistry, if...
SARAH DESSEN

I was born in 1970 in Illinois, but all the life I remember I've spent in Chapel Hill, N.C.
SARAH DESSEN

Outside, the ocean was crashing, waves hitting sand, then pulling back to sea. I thought of everythi...
SARAH DESSEN

Maybe if I'd agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of ridin...
SARAH DESSEN

Relationships dont always make sense. Especially from the outside
SARAH DESSEN

Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be so easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the thing...
SARAH DESSEN

Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actu...
SARAH DESSEN

Stuff that would be weird in the bright light of day just wasn't so much once you passed a certain h...
SARAH DESSEN

Really, it had been stupid to expect anything anyway. A few late nights does not a habit, or a relat...
SARAH DESSEN

I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead,...
SARAH DESSEN

Look, everyone mourns at their own pace. Maybe you're just a little bit ahead of her, but she'll get...
SARAH DESSEN

She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands f...
SARAH DESSEN

But anyone can begin. It was the part with all the promise, the potential, the things I loved. More ...
SARAH DESSEN

There's just something obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.
SARAH DESSEN

Macy: “In Truth,” I said, “there are no rules other than you have to tell the truth.”
W...
SARAH DESSEN

funny how a beautiful song could tell such a sad story
SARAH DESSEN

Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?
SARAH DESSEN

Not everything's perfect, especially in the beginning. And its all right to have a little bit of reg...
SARAH DESSEN

Well, it's true that I have been hurt in my life. Quite a bit. But it's also true that I have loved,...
SARAH DESSEN

She knew I could tell with one glance, one look, one simple instant. It was her eyes. Despite the th...
SARAH DESSEN

I didnt pay atteniton to times or distance, instead focusing on how it felt just to be in motion, kn...
SARAH DESSEN

Wherever you will go,
I will let you down,
But this lullaby goes on.
SARAH DESSEN

I am still the center sister. But I see it differently now. There has to be a middle. Without it, no...
SARAH DESSEN

Maybe not," she said as we came to the car. "But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that...
SARAH DESSEN

Remy: Did you really believe, that first day, that we were meant to be together?

Dexter: ...
SARAH DESSEN

Love is so unpredictable. That's what makes it so great.
SARAH DESSEN

Silence is so freaking loud
SARAH DESSEN

You're not supposed to have it all figured out in high school. If you knew it all, and it was th...
SARAH DESSEN

I'd still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time....
SARAH DESSEN

Despite my dad's assurances I was strangely nervous my stomach tight ever since we'd hung up. Maybe ...
SARAH DESSEN

That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we...
SARAH DESSEN

because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. no matter what...
SARAH DESSEN

I've never envied the person who had to put my books together in one script.
SARAH DESSEN

Sometimes, you get things right the first time. Others, the second. But the third time, they say, is...
SARAH DESSEN

He glanced over at me. 'Scared? Of Reggie? What, she thinks he might force her to give up caffeine f...
SARAH DESSEN

In midair, dangling lost above the world.
SARAH DESSEN

And so we stood there in the kitchen, my mother and I, facing off over everything that had built up ...
SARAH DESSEN

And to know me, as you have discovered, is to love me.
SARAH DESSEN

Sometimes you dont even want to think aout what people are doing with their groceries.
SARAH DESSEN

Best Friends.

And I thought of what she had done all the millions of times I cried to he...
SARAH DESSEN

Why don't you ever wait a second and see what I'm planning, or thinking, before you burst in with yo...
SARAH DESSEN

I didn't want to leave things the way we had, unresolved, ... and tried to tell myself he cared abou...
SARAH DESSEN

It was something I couldn't put my finger on or define clearly, but a whole mishmash of words and in...
SARAH DESSEN

As far as I was concerned, we'd come to a draw: I hadn't wanted to come, and she didn't want me to l...
SARAH DESSEN

The language of solace, and comets, and the girls we all become, in the end.
SARAH DESSEN

This world is an awful/ugly place not to have a best friend.
SARAH DESSEN

its reall bad
SARAH DESSEN

Just like that, with one phone call, she was a daughter again.
SARAH DESSEN

I hoped that Grace would be a little bit of the best of all of us: Scarlett's spirit, and my mother'...
SARAH DESSEN

If you have just one person believe in you, you'll always find your way
SARAH DESSEN

You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lo...
SARAH DESSEN

And that was it; it was so easy for her. My own memories did not even belong to me. But I knew she w...
SARAH DESSEN

I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, trut...
SARAH DESSEN

He wasn't what I'd thought he was; maybe he never had been. I wasn't what I'd thought I was, either.
SARAH DESSEN

When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a coloring book, with the inside not y...
SARAH DESSEN

Mom." I couldn't believe she was doing this again. She was taking this moment, this time when I was ...
SARAH DESSEN

I wondered again why the right thing always seemed to be met with so much resistance, when you'd thi...
SARAH DESSEN

Macon: “It’s true. And if that doesn’t work, use the Jedi Mind Trick. But only if you really h...
SARAH DESSEN

Don't be a fool. Don't give up something important to hold onto someone who can't even say they love...
SARAH DESSEN

I've given lots of people chances," she said suddenly, as if Marion was still in the room to hear us...
SARAH DESSEN

I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from...
SARAH DESSEN

You can't just turn your heart off like a faucet; you have to go to the source and dry it out, drop ...
SARAH DESSEN

You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lo...
SARAH DESSEN

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they we...
SARAH DESSEN

Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. It just doesn’t catch up, it overt...
SARAH DESSEN

Sometimes it seems safer to hold it all in, where the only person who can judge is yourself.
SARAH DESSEN

The bottom line is, what defines you isn't how many times you crash, but the number of times you get...
SARAH DESSEN

An ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led u...
SARAH DESSEN

So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop the...
SARAH DESSEN

Friends are honest with each other. Even if the truth hurts.
-Maggie
SARAH DESSEN

Two a.m.' He swallowed, then said, "You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter wha...
SARAH DESSEN

So much had happened that morning. Yet it was this image, this moment, that i kept going back to hou...
SARAH DESSEN

[Adam picks up the camera] "I have to get a shot of this."
The reaction in the room was swift, ...
SARAH DESSEN

You get what you give, but also what you're willing to take.
SARAH DESSEN

It didn't make you noble to step away from something that wasn't working, even if you thought you we...
SARAH DESSEN

There's a kind of radar that you get, after years of being talked about and made fun of by other peo...
SARAH DESSEN

You can't make any one person your world. The trick is to take what each can give you and build a wo...
SARAH DESSEN

Hate Spinnerbait!
SARAH DESSEN

It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovere...
SARAH DESSEN

It doesn't matter, anyway, why you like me. Just that you do.
SARAH DESSEN

Suddenly, I was just sure he was going to kiss me. He was there, I could feel his breath, the ground...
SARAH DESSEN

There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn't sure I had it in me ...
SARAH DESSEN

Oh for God's sake,' Heather said, 'I wish you two would just go out, fail miserably as a couple, and...
SARAH DESSEN

It's a great compliment that people think they're fast reads. It's always funny to me because it tak...
SARAH DESSEN

Wherever you will go,
I will let you down,
But this lullaby goes on.
SARAH DESSEN

I think my mother characters have changed a lot since Sasha was born, just because I understand what...
SARAH DESSEN

With love like that, you can't get pick about how it finds you or the details. All that matters is t...
SARAH DESSEN

You want me to give her a key?" the guy asked.
"I want you to give her a possibility," she told...
SARAH DESSEN

What was it like to be so confident even in your failings that you weren't the least bit bothered wh...
SARAH DESSEN

Look,” he said, “the point is there’s no way to be a hundred percent sure about anyone or anyt...
SARAH DESSEN

Your mother won a special reward," she told me, "because everyone had a head in her pictures. We all...
SARAH DESSEN

Rogerson," I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, "where would I find the...
SARAH DESSEN

I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran...
SARAH DESSEN

Nothing like being scolded by a hippie.
SARAH DESSEN

After all, it's all kinds of things that make up a life, right? The big, like falling in love and sp...
SARAH DESSEN

I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I'd practically invented.
SARAH DESSEN

Maybe we were all destined to just keep doing the same stupid things, over and over again, never rea...
SARAH DESSEN

After the group vet appointment--during which Lyle scratched the vet, the vet tech, and some poor wo...
SARAH DESSEN

It [I'm leaving] wasn't really necessary to say, especially if you were already walking away. Almost...
SARAH DESSEN

It was so risky and so scary, and yet at the same time, so beautiful. Maybe the truth was, it should...
SARAH DESSEN

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

That's not a real answer.'
Says who?'
Says me. I mean real fear, like of failure, of death...
SARAH DESSEN

It's hard to be nice when the rest of the world is so mean.
SARAH DESSEN

I want the white one
SARAH DESSEN

As Isabel acted out her date, both of them laughing, I stayed in the kitchen, out of sight, and pret...
SARAH DESSEN

Isn't it weird," I said, "the way you remember things, when someone's gone?"
What do you mean?"...
SARAH DESSEN

I can still see Boo sitting there on the floor, cross-legged, holding my Ken and watching my face as...
SARAH DESSEN

So what's your doll's name?" Boo asked me.
"Barbie," I said. "All their names are Barbie."
SARAH DESSEN

Why should I even bother? What's the point, really?"
He thought for a moment. "Who says there h...
SARAH DESSEN

I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings...
SARAH DESSEN

If someone is really close with you, your getting upset or them getting upset is okay, and they don�...
SARAH DESSEN

Restoring order of my personal universe suddenly seemed imperative, as I refolded my T-shirts, stuff...
SARAH DESSEN

There were so many places in my time with Rogerson that I wished I could go back to, hitting the sto...
SARAH DESSEN

That's what this has been all about for you, correct? Make it clear. That you and me--it was nothing...
SARAH DESSEN

And for one second, it was like I could feel the timing clicking together, finally pieces falling in...
SARAH DESSEN

Sometimes, you have to manufacture your own history. Give fate a push, so to speak.
SARAH DESSEN

It was amazing how you could get so far from where you'd planned, and yet find it was exactly were y...
SARAH DESSEN

These were always the weirdest trips for me, when it was midnight or even later, and we pulled up to...
SARAH DESSEN

You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn't like...
SARAH DESSEN

Story of my life.
SARAH DESSEN

instead, we just sat there, together but really apart, watching a show about a stranger and all her ...
SARAH DESSEN

I understood now. This voice, the one that had been trying to get my attention all this time, callin...
SARAH DESSEN

I am the middle sister. The one in between. Not oldest, not youngest, not boldest, not nicest. I am ...
SARAH DESSEN

I'd been convinced I was on the outside, but really, I'd always been within arm's reach. All I had t...
SARAH DESSEN

Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. it doesn't just catch up: it overtak...
SARAH DESSEN

Because the truth sometimes hurts," I said.
Yeah," he said. "So do lies, though.
SARAH DESSEN

So while it seemed like you were seeing everything, you really weren't. Just bits and pieces that lo...
SARAH DESSEN

Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.

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Sarah Dessen

Maybe other writers have perfect first drafts, but I am not one of them. I always try to get the book as tight as I can, but you reach a point as the author where you have lost all perspective.

Sarah Dessen

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