No one could tell you: you just had to go through it on your own. If you were lucky, you came out on the other side and understood. If you didn't, you kept getting thrust back, retracing those steps, until you finally got it right.


Sarah Dessen

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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