Sarah Dessen

“All I'd ever wanted was to forget. but even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below.”

“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 sa...”

“It’s like forever, always changing.”

“Relationships dont always make sense. Especially from the outside”

“You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn't like a light switch, easy to turn on or off. If you were in, you were in. Out, you were out.”

“But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of...”

“Oh for God's sake,' Heather said, 'I wish you two would just go out, fail miserably as a couple, and get it over with.”

“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 circum...”

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

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

“I think my mother characters have changed a lot since Sasha was born, just because I understand what a hard job it is now, and I'm coming at it from another angle - like you just love and ca...”

“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...”

“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 co...”

“I think part of the problem sometimes is that there's so much happening in my books, to whittle it down into a single script is hard.”