Quotes by Sarah Dessen

“It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine.”

“It didnt make you noble to step away from something that wasnt working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. 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.”

“You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. Its not overrated. Theres a reason for all those songs.”

“You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. Its always been yes when it comes to you.”

“The fate of your heart is your choice and no one else gets a vote”

“It seemed like this day could go in so many directions, like a spiderweb shooting out toward endless possibilities. Whenever you made a choice, especially one youd been resisting, it always affected everything else, some in big ways, like a tremor beneath your feet, others in so tiny a shift you hardly noticed a change at all. But it was happening.”

“Are those the only options? Nothing or forever?”

“Love is so unpredictable. Thats what makes it so great.”

“That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think its reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.”

“Dont think or judge, just listen.”

“I realized how truly hard it was, really, to see someone you love change right before your eyes. Not only is it scary, it throws your balance off as well.”

“I mean, its not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. Its, like, part of you for good.”

“He wasnt the type for displays of affection, either verbal or not. He was disgusted by couples that made out in the hallways between classes, and got annoyed at even the slightest sappy moments in movies. But I knew he cared about me: he just conveyed it more subtly, as concise with expressing this emotion as he was with everything else. It was in the way hed put his hand on the small of my back, for instance, or how hed smile at me when I said something that surprised him. Once I might have wanted more, but Id come around to his way of thinking in the time wed been together. And we were together, all the time. So he didnt have to prove how he felt about me. Like so much else, I should just know.”

“Your mother won a special reward, she told me, because everyone had a head in her pictures. We all applauded.”

“I like flaws. I think they make things interesting.”

“There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.”

“He was not my boyfriend. On the other hand, he wasnt just a friend either. Instead, our relationship was elastic, stretching between those two extremes depending on who else was around, how much either of us had to drink, and other varying factors. This was exactly what I wanted, as commitments had never really been my thing. And it wasnt like it was hard, either. The only trick was never giving more than you were willing to lose.”

“If you didnt love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and everything that followed it is part of letting it go.”

“No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And thats the key. Its like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.”