Sarah Dessen quotes:

In high school, I was lucky enough to have a big group of girlfriends that have really inspired a lot of the stories in my books. I'm still close with my friends from that time, so it's never very hard to put myself back into that place, that voice.

I really just love to read, period, whether it be books or magazines or the back of the cereal box. It's the one thing I can always count on to calm me down, take me away and inspire me, all at once.

I write thank-you notes the minute I throw the wrapping paper away.

If you didn't 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.

...You can't unlearn something, even if you want to. You know what you know.

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

It's not that I believe everything happens for a reason. It's just that... I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It's the universe's way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It's how life is."

When I was a teen, I was never really into the captain of the football team or the student body president. The guys I liked were quirky and different: They listened to music I'd never heard of, never had lunch or gas money, and could always make you laugh.

I love writing about the summer between high school and college. It's the last gasp of really being a teen.

Sometimes really, really bad things happen to people, and there is no explanation and no reason whatsoever.

I don't live in New York or California. I'm in the grocery store, at the park with my kids, and I'm a normal person. I'm feeding my chickens and agonizing about my next book!

[Adam picks up the camera] "I have to get a shot of this."The reaction in the room was swift, and unanimous: every single person except me raised their hands at once to cover their faces. The accompanying utterances, though, were varied. I heard everything from "Please no" (Maggie), to "Jesus Christ" (Wallace), to "Stop it or die" (I'm assuming it's obvious).

[Adam picks up the camera] I have to get a shot of this.The reaction in the room was swift, and unanimous: every single person except me raised their hands at once to cover their faces. The accompanying utterances, though, were varied. I heard everything from Please no (Maggie), to Jesus Christ (Wallace), to Stop it or die (I'm assuming it's obvious).

That first love. And the first one who breaks your heart. For me, they just happen to be the same person.

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

I'm famously secretive about my work. Nobody reads my books till they're finished.

The choices you make now, the people you surround yourself with, they all have the potential to affect your life, even who you are, forever."

I feel like Twitter was tailor-made for me, because I can do short spurts all day long. I loved my blog, but doing daily, then thrice weekly entries was really time consuming. 140 characters is perfect.

Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we'd found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.

I always wished I could move around and switch schools. It was hard to have these radical transformations. You'd think, 'I will be a totally different person tomorrow,' but it never worked.

Sometimes a question can hurt more than an answer.

So I just decided to relax into it, bumpy and crazy as it might be, and try for once to just go along for the ride.

I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own. Maybe you would feel lost in the crowd. Or sheltered by it. Whatever the case, one things was for sure: like it or not, you'd never be alone.

I'm always hopeful. I feel like I'm at the prom sitting against the wall waiting for someone to ask me to dance.

I'm all about shrimpburgers, reading, and going to the beach.

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

All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind.

Everyone can make scrambled eggs, Remy. It's programmed into you at birth, the default setting. Like being able to swim and knowing not to mix pickles with oatmeal. You just know.

I'd tried to tell him that first day. I'd said I didn't always tell the truth, that I didn't handle conflict well, that anger scared me, that I was used to people just disappearing when they were mad. Our mistake was that we'd both thought I was capable of changing. That I had changed. In the end, though, that was the biggest lie of all."

She's a baby," Maggie told meBabies wear pastels.""Says who?" I asked. ..Society. The same society, I might add, that dictates that little girls should always be sugar and spice and everything nice, which engourages them to not be assertive. And that, in turn, then leads to low self-esteem, which can lead to eating disorders and increased tolerance and acceptance of domestic, sexual, and substance abuse."

You want to take me to a movie?" I asked. "Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off.

Maybe it was true, and being a girl could be about interest rates and skinny jeans, riding bikes and wearing pink. Not about any one thing, but everything.

It's the same thing,' I told her. 'What is?' 'Being afraid and being alive.' 'No,' she said slowly, and now it was as if she was speaking a language she knew at first I wouldn't understand, the very words, not to mention the concept, being foreign to me. 'Macy, no. It's not.

Anyone can hide. Facing up to things, working through them, that's what makes you strong.

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

The true story...is the realization that no time in your life is ever perfect, that even the best memories have cracks you might not see.

With love like that, you can't get pick about how it finds you or the details. All that matters is that it's there. Better late than never.

But I saw Blake earlier and he said he and Nate were taking off for an overnight business thing. So..." "... you're just going to jump their fence and their pool," I finished for her. Silence. Then Jamie said, "It's twenty-five degrees! In December! Do you know what this means?" "The apocalypse?

I just can't ever be a free spirit and just relax. When it comes to work, this is good. I'm very disciplined, which with writing is often half the battle, or more. But it also means that if I want to, say, play hooky and chocolate and watch Bravo all afternoon, I feel horribly guilty. I wish I could find a nice balance.

The end of a wedding reception is always so depressing. And only the bride and groom are spared, jetting off into the sunset while the rest of us wake up the next morning to just another day.

You can't act like you care about someone but not let them care about you.

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.

Change is inevitable, though," he replied. "As is disappointment. Best to get used to it now.

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

But something, somehow, had made all these paths converge. You couldn't find it on a checklist, or work it into the equation. It just happened.

Once, I was easy. Now, I was choosy. See? Big difference.

Pretend to be a delinquent?" I asked clarifying. "You can do it," Dave advised me. "Just don't smile, and try to look like you're considering stealing something.

My dad is a retired Shakespeare professor, my mother a retired classicist. Suffice to say I grew up in a house full of books, where reading was encouraged if not required.

We all have one idea of what the color blue is, but pressed to describe it specifically, there are so many ways: the ocean, lapis lazuli, the sky, someone's eyes. Our definitions are as different as we are ourselves.

I don't believe in failure, because simply by saying you've failed, you've admitted you attempted. And anyone who attempts is not a failure. Those who truly fail in my eyes are the ones who never try at all. The ones who sit on the couch and whine and moan and wait for the world to change for them.

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

Maybe if I'd agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I'd always tell her, why can't I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?

The bottom line is, what defines you isn't how many times you crash, but the number of times you get back on the bike. As long as it's one more. you're all good.

Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn't make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you're doing it out of fear.

But if everything was always smooth and perfect, you'd get too used to that, you know? You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right.

I can say I made a lot of mistakes, but I don't regret things. Because at least I didn't spend a life standing outside, wondering what living would be like.

But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable,walking through this life half-sleeping,everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids.I didn't care if they sang to me.All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again,pulling me upward into light,to drown.

She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.

Now I felt like I was drifting, sucked down by an undertow, and too far out to swim back to the shore.

But even more so, it reminded me that this was all really happening. Stanford. The end of the summer. The beginning of my real life. It was no longer just creeping up, peeking over the horizon, but instead lingering in plain sight.

You own a Tic Tac. Gum is just borrowed. - Esther

I'm really interested in the idea of anomynity and familiarity. And sunglasses, you know, are so indicatitve of that. I mean, they're worn by some people to hide themselves. But they're also a fashion statement, meant to be noticed. So there's a dichotomy there.

Hey, think fast!' I just looked at Fave as he chucked the basketball at me with possibly the worst overhand throw I'd ever seen. It landed to my far right, then bounced past me, banging against my dad's truck. 'Do you have a vision problem of something?' I asked him. 'Just keeping you on your toes,' he replied

I'd been convinced I was on the outside, but really, I'd always been within arm's reach. All I had to do was ask, and I, too, would be easily brought back, surrounded and immersed, finding myself safe, somewhere in between.

It's gonna be okay," I said. It was the first time in a long time that I believed it. "It will.

He's getting dumped. And he doesn't even know it yet. He's probably eating a cheeseburger or flossing or picking up his dry cleaning, and he has no idea. No inkling.

All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.

My point is you're different here. Hollis I've only been here for a month. A lot can happen in a month he replied. Shoot in two weeks I met my future wife changed my entire life's trajectory and bought my first tie. You bought a tie I asked. Because honestly this was the most shocking part.

Maybe not," she said as we came to the car. "But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.

She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.

It's all about you, Colie." She touched one finger to her temple, tap tap tap. "Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine." There is something infectious about confidence. And for that one moment, with my eyebrows burning and my eyes watering, I believed. "And good hair never hurt either.

It was great. Freedom even the imagined kind always is.

It was like when you're a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-mart and it's just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school.

In my group of friends, I was always the one who remembered everything. The stories, the boys my friends and I dated, all the details. So I think a part of me was always filing them away, although at the time I wasn't sure why.

Looking at her, I thought again how beautiful she was - even in jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, she was breathtaking. So much so that it was hard to believe she could ever have looked at herself and seen anything else.

From what I could see, the hardwood was just fine. Then again, I'd just see a windmill and an open sky, too, never feeling the need to conquer either. You think it's all obvious and straightforward, this world. But really, it's all in who is doing the looking.

If you try anything, if you try to lose weight, or to improve yourself, or to love, or to make the world a better place, you have already achieved something wonderful, before you even begin. Forget failure. If things don't work out the way you want, hold your head up high and be proud. And try again. And again. And again!

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

It wasn't about being happy or unhappy. I just didn't want to be me anymore.

The basic fact is that no, this isnt ideal. Very few things are. Sometimes, you have to manufacture your own history. Give fate a push,so to speak. -Heidi

She knew I could tell with one glance, one look, one simple instant. It was her eyes. Despite the thick makeup, they were still dark-rimmed., haunted, and sad. Most of all though, they were familiar. The fact that we were in front of hundreds of strangers changed nothing at all. I'd spent a summer with those same eyes-scared, lost, confused-staring back at me. I would have known them anywhere.

It's true. It's like the hidden secret that no one tells you. we can all be beautiful girls, Colie. it's so easy. it's like Dorothy clicking her heels to go home. You could do it all along.

I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.

Look, the point is there's no way to be a hundred percent sure about anyone or anything. So you're left with a choice. Either hope for the best or just expect the worst.

I honestly don't have many creative outlets. I'm not crafty - although motherhood has forced me to try to be - and I can only draw trees, beaches, and clouds. I'm a so-so cook except for deviled eggs. Writing has always been the one thing I feel that I am pretty good at doing. But it's enough, thank goodness.

I don't lie." "You don't lie," I repeated. "That's what I said." "Ever." "Nope." Sure you don't, I thought.

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

Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.

Don't think or judge, just listen.

Silence is so freaking loud

I was beginning to see, though, that the unknown wasn't always the greatest thing to fear. The people who know you best can be risker, because the words they say and things they think have the potential to be not only scary but true, as well.

You know, I think I knew you for about three weeks before I ever really saw you smile. And then one day, Morgan said something and you laughed, and I remember thinking it was really cool because it meant something. You're not the kind of person who smiles for nothing, Colie. I have to earn every one.

Being brave and self-confident doesn't necessarily start inside...It starts with the rest of the world, and it leads back to you.

As impossible, in fact, as keeping the moon...So I looked down the line at all my friends, knowing I would always remember this. And then I turned my gaze back up to the sky, and put my faith in that moon and its return.

Mayonnaise is a lot like men, it can make everything much better, adding flavor and ease to your life. Or, it can just be sticky and gross and make you nauseous"- "Keeping the Moon

There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.

I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.

The past did affect the present and the future, in ways you could see and a million ones you couldn't. Time wasn't a thing you could divide easily; there was no defined middle or beginning or end. I could pretend to leave the past behind, but it would not leave me.

I always wrote about girls that went to the beach and had that summer that changed everything. So I was interested in what it would be like to live in a tourist town where everyone has these life changing experiences, but your whole life is there.

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

It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovered--so many locks not enough keys.

In the end, though, maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.

You couldn't see the key around my neck: it hung too low under both collars. But if I leaned in close, I could make it out, buried deep beneath. Out of sight, hard to recognize, but still able to be found, even if I was the only one to ever look for it.

Well," I said finally, knowing he was waiting, "you make me laugh." He nodded. "And?" "You're pretty good-looking." "Pretty good-looking? I called you beautiful." "You want to be beautiful?" I asked him. "Are you saying I'm not?

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 that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.

Relationships dont always make sense. Especially from the outside

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

This Lullaby is only a few words, a simple run of chords, quiet here in this spare room, but you can hear it, hear it, wherever you may go, even if I let you down, this lullaby plays on...

I had no illusions about love anymore. It came, it went, it left casualties or it didn't. People weren't meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say.

Everything, in the end, comes down to timing. One second, one minute, one hour could make all the difference.

Okay. Enough." I got out of the closet, brushing myself off, then turned around to face her. "This is happening. So you need to go downstairs, face your fears, and make the best of it, and everything will be okay." She narrowed her eyes at me. "When did you suddenly become so positive?" "Just get out of there.

Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine.

It didn't make you noble to step away from something that wasn't 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.

I just thought to my self, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural chemistry, if you will. And I had a feeling that something big was going to happen. To both of us. That we were, in fact, meant to be together.

Remy: Did you really believe, that first day, that we were meant to be together? Dexter: You're here, aren't you?

Maybe" she said. "I just wish we'd have a little mishap.It would be reassuring

The worst thing you can do if you miss or need someone is let them know it.

It was amazing how you could get so far from where you'd planned, and yet find it was exactly were you needed to be.

Only a weak person needed someone else around all the time.

Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you.