Top 825 Quotes & Sayings by Sarah Dessen - Page 12

Total commitment. You know, the idea of discovering something that, for all intents and purposes, goes against your abilities, and yet still deciding to do it anyway. That takes guts, you know?

This is exactly what i wanted, as commitments had never really been my thing. And it wasn't like it was hard, either. The only trick was never giving more than you were willing to lose.

Looking back, it seemed like it should have been harder to lose someone, or have them lose you, especially when they were in the same state, only a few towns over.

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

Still, there was also was something reassuring about working for Commercial, almost hopeful. Like things that were lost could be found again. As we drove away, I always tried to imagine what it would be like to open your door to find something you had given up on.

The health of the people I love is all that really matters in this world. Period.

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.

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

Love is so unpredictable. Sometimes you'll know a man for years and then one day, boom! Suddenly you see him in a different way. And other times, it's that first date, that first moment. That's what makes it so great.

One open, one closed. It was no wonder that the first image that came to mind when I thought of either of my sisters was a door. With Kirsten, it was the front one to our house, through which she was always coming in or out, usually in mid-sentence, a gaggle of friends trailing behind her. Whitney’s was the one to her bedroom, which she preferred to keep shut between her and the rest of us, always.

It is kind of hard to hold a lot in. But for me… it’s sometimes even harder to let it out.

"I just don't know," I said, my voice sounding bumby, not like mine, "how do you help someone who doesn't want your help. What do you do when you can't do anything?"

So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out – out of earshot, out of the house – even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.

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

I have to admit, an unrequited love is so much better than a real one. I mean, it's perfect... As long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.

I paused, only just now realizing that the subject was hitting a little close to home. "You know, getting hurt. Putting herself out there, opening up to someone." Yeah," he said adding some cheese straws to the cart, "but risk is just part of relationships. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't." I picked up a box of cheese straws, examining it. "Yeah," I said. "But it's not all about chance, either.

Rogerson," I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, "where would I find the pelagic zone?" "In the open sea," he said. "Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints.

I had stepped into his arms, showing him my raw, broken heart.

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.

At every wedding someone stays home.

Not for the first time, I wished both of us could just say what we meant. But that, like so much else, was impossible

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.

He doesn’t love me. He might still love me as I was at fifteen, when I didn’t know any better. When I trusted everyone. I’m not that person any more. He’s just a boy. He was the first to really hurt me, but he’s just a boy. There were a lot of them.

But anyone can begin. It was the part with all the promise, the potential, the things I loved. More and more, though, I was finding myself wanting to find out what happened in the end.

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.

"So you're always honest," I said. "Aren't you?" "No," I told him. "I'm not." "Well, that's good to know, I guess." "I'm not saying I'm a liar," I told him. He raised his eyebrows. "That's not how I meant it, anyways." "How'd you mean it, then?" "I just...I don't always say what I feel." "Why not?" "Because the truth sometimes hurts," I said. "Yeah," he said. "So do lies, though."

Hollis " I said "you're messing with me right now aren't you You're in Paris or somewhere and just-" "What " he replied. "No This is the real deal. Here I'll prove it." There was a muffled noise followed by some static. Then I heard my mother recite at a distance in her most droll flat tone "Yes. It is true. Your brother is in love and in my kitchen.

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.

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

How it seemed like you could see everything, but certain things were blocked out, hidden.

I walked over, my eyes scanning Luna Blu, my house, and Dave's. But it was the building behind them, that empty hotel, that had the tiniest light, provided by one word, written in fluorescent paint. Maybe it wasn't what was once there, in real life. But in this one, it said it all: STAY.

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.

nothing is guaranteed.... So don't be afraid. Be alive.

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

but you could also look at it the other way. Like you’re saying no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.

From this distance, in the dimness, the model looked surreal, made up of parts filled with buildings, bordered by long stretches of empty space. It reminded me of the way cities and towns look when you are flying at night. You can't make out much. But the places where people have come together, and stayed, are collections of tiny lights, breaking up the darkness.

I felt like I'd been swimming so hard, and the water growing warmer and warmer the closer I got to the top. I wasn't there yet, but now I could see the surface, rippling just beyond my fingers.

I just stood there, looking at her. My head was spinning, my mouth dry, and all I could think about was that I wanted to go someplace safe, someplace I could be alone and okay, and that this was impossible. My old life had changed and my new one was still in progress, altering by the second. There was nothing, nothing to depend on. And why was I surprised?

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

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.

During this time we've been apart, it's you I've thought of when I'm at my weakest, and you who have pulled me through.

She took the sun when it came and the rain the same way.

If there's one thing I've learned in the last few months, it's that sometimes you just have to close your eyes and jump.

So I left him there alone to watch history repeat the same events retold again and again on his own.

Sure, there was no guarantee any of these things would actually happen as he envisioned. But maybe that wasn?t the point.It was the planning that counted, whether it ever came to fruition or not.

As if he was beating me to the punch, his words living forever, while I was left speechless, no rebuttal, no words left to say.

but accepting help doesn?t have to mean giving up control.

I'd chosen instead to just change my route, go miles out of the way, as if avoiding it would make it go away once and for all.

Clearly, sharing something could take you a long way, or at least to a different place than you'd planned. Like a friendship or a family, or even jsut alone on a curb on a Saturday, trying to get your bearings as best you can.

He's very nice. He's something I replied. She considered this zipping her purse shut. Then she said Well everyone is. Everyone is Something. For some reason that stuck with me simple and yet not every since she'd said it. It was like a puzzle as well two vague words with one clear one between them.

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

I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell anyone. As long as I didn't say it aloud, it wasn't real.

For two hours I'd felt myself stretching tighter and tighter, like a rubber band pulled to the point of snapping. And now, I could feel the smaller, weaker part of myself beginning to fray, tiny bits giving way before the big break.

Needing was so easy: it came naturally, like breathing. Being needed by someone else, though, that was the hard part. But as with giving help and accepting it, we had to do both to be made complete-like links overlapping to form a chain, or a lock finding the right key.

I'd seen another shade of him, and if it had been light where we were now, he'd have seen the same of me. So I was grateful, as I had been so often in my life, for the dark.

Sometimes. It was a good escape. Until, you know, it wasn?t.

Looking at the pond, all I could think was that it is an incredivle thing, how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all.

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

Everyone laughed, and just like that, the conversation shifted, jumping to another topic. It was fast and furious, the talking, the emotions, the back-and-forth and forth-and-back. I realized that if I tried to focus on it too much, I got overwhelmed. 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.

and I wondered if, in the end, this is how all disputes are settled, with a shared silence as things become equal. You take something from me, I take something from you. We all want balance, one way or another.