The voices / 275 fragments

Sarah Dessen

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Archive entries

01Undated

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

Sarah Dessen / quote

02Undated

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

Sarah Dessen / quote

03Undated

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.

Sarah Dessen / quote

04Undated

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

Sarah Dessen / quote

05Undated

I like flaws. I think they make things interesting.

Sarah Dessen / quote

06Undated

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

Sarah Dessen / quote

07Undated

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

Sarah Dessen / quote

08Undated

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.

Sarah Dessen / quote

09Undated

He wasn't 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 he'd put his hand on the small of my back, for instance, or how he'd smile at me when I said something that surprised him. Once I might have wanted more, but I'd come around to his way of thinking in the time we'd been together. And we were together, all the time. So he didn't have to prove how he felt about me. Like so much else, I should just know.

Sarah Dessen / quote

10Undated

He was not my boyfriend. On the other hand, he wasn't 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 wasn't like it was hard, either. The only trick was never giving more than you were willing to lose.

Sarah Dessen / quote

11Undated

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.

Sarah Dessen / quote

12Undated

I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good.

Sarah Dessen / quote

13Undated

Love is so unpredictable. That's what makes it so great.

Sarah Dessen / quote

14Undated

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.

Sarah Dessen / quote

15Undated

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

Sarah Dessen / quote

16Undated

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.

Sarah Dessen / quote

17Undated

Are those the only options? Nothing or forever?

Sarah Dessen / quote

18Undated

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.

Sarah Dessen / quote

19Undated

The truth was I knew, after all those flat January days, that I deserved better. I deserved I love yous and kiwi fruits and warriors coming to my door, besotted with love. I deserved pictures of my face in a thousand expressions, and the warmth of a baby's kick beneath my hand. I deserved to grow, and to change, to become all the girls I could be over the course of my life, each one better than the last.

Sarah Dessen / quote

20Undated

Look," I said, "We knew Jason and Becky would be back, the break would end. This isn't a surprise, it's what's supposed to happen. It's what we wanted. Right?""Is it?" he asked. "Is it what you want?"Whether he intended it to be or not, this was the final question, the last Truth. If I said what I really thought, I was opening myself up for a hurt bigger than I could even imagine. I didn't have it in me. We changed and altered so many rules, but it was this one, the only one when we'd started, that I would break."Yes," I said.

Sarah Dessen / quote

21Undated

You know, when it works, love is amazing. It's not overrated.

Sarah Dessen / quote

22Undated

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.

Sarah Dessen / quote

23Undated

It's all in the view. That's what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count.

Sarah Dessen / quote

24Undated

Some people, they can't just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me... I don't know. I didn't want to fix it, to forget. It wasn't something that was broken. It's just...something that happened. And like that hole, I'm just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remembering and getting on at the same time.

Sarah Dessen / quote