Sarah Dessen

“The important thing to remember, ... is that you are a human being and worthy of respect.”

“The point,' Ms. Conyers continued, "is that no word had one specific definition. Maybe in the dictionary, but not in real life.”

“I've changed in my sympathies since I've become a mother myself. In high school I went through a period where I was close with my mom and had to break with her in order to find myself and come back. Since that was my experience, that's often what happens in my books.”

“The thing is, you can’t always have the best of everything. Because for a life to be real, you need it all: good and bad, beach and concrete, the familiar and the unknown, big talkers and small towns.”

“My mother was strong, in all the ways I was weak. She fell, she hurt, she felt. She lived. And for all the tumble of her experiences, she still had hope. Maybe this next time would do the trick. Or maybe not. But unless you stepped into the game, you will never know.”

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

“To me she said, "It's this stupid gotcha thing, they've been doing it for weeks now. Leaping out at each other and us, scaring the hell out of everyone.""It's a game of wits," Bert said to me."Half-wits," Kristy added.”

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

“Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be so easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder--if not impossible--to lose.”

“I felt tears prick my eyes as I looked down at the model again, looking at that girl and boy on the curb. Forever in that place, together.”

“I'd been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.”

“I didnt pay atteniton to times or distance, instead focusing on how it felt just to be in motion, knowing it wasn't about the finish line but how I got there that mattered.”

“I'd made my choice, though, and I couldn't take it back.”

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

“The future was one thing that could never be broken, because it had not yet had the chance to be anything.”

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

“I knew that in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late again. I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome.”

“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!”

“I didn't want to leave things the way we had, unresolved, ... and tried to tell myself he cared about me enough not to look elsewhere for what I wasn't giving him.”

“I've been writing, in one way or another, for as long as I can remember.”