“Everything in life had its phases, and if you were smart, you learned to appreciate them all. What really mattered, though, were the people in those moments with you. Memories are what we have and what we keep, and I held mine close. The ones I knew well, like a night on the beach with a boy who would always live in my heart, and the ones yet to come with another.”

American novelist, young adult fiction

Sarah Dessen is an American novelist known for young adult fiction. Her first book, That Summer, appeared in 1996. She has published more than a dozen other novels and novellas, and 221 quotes on this site are attributed to her. Her work centers on stories for young readers, and in 2017 she received the Margaret Edwards Award for part of that body of work. Two of her books were adapted into the 2003 film How to Deal.