Sarah Dessen Quotes

It is hard to tell your mother to change her life.

She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all.

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.

I love working with my dad, but I need to be independent and do my own stuff.

My father was often angry when I was most like him.

I wanted above all else not to be like my mum.

I would have gone home to my mother, but I'm not that crazy about my mother.

My mother is who she is. I've become who I am. At some point I realized those two just didn't go together.

I resemble the father I once hated.

Yes, I'm very close to my family. And being that close to your family, I think you also struggle with how to become your own person.

The idea that the family is this locus of support but can also hold you back and keep you down makes for good drama.

I think so much of your energy when you're growing up is about becoming independent of your parents. And the older you get, the more you realise you're actually so much part and parcel of the same kind of material.

There was a point when I told my daddy I didn't want to go hunting anymore.

I didn't want to work with my father. I wanted to see if I could develop my own career.

For a long time, I didn't think I had the right to walk away from my family.

When I was younger, I used to spend a lot of time either by myself or with my mom. But when I hit high school, she really became one of my close friends.

Out in society, you tend to show your good side to people, but at home, you snap at your mom.

My mother and I had a lot of distance between us emotionally, although, on the surface, most of the time, we appeared good and friendly, and all that. But I was a problem. I was a street kid.

I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law.

Oshima's silent for a time as he gazes at the forest, eyes narrowed. Birds are flitting from one branch to the next. His hands are clasped behind his head. "I know how you feel," he finally says. "But this is something you have to work out on your own. Nobody can help you. That's what love's all about, Kafka. You're the one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.

I'm not giving any guidance, OK. I mean, you know, mothers are not supposed to give guidance, right? Anyway, so he's [Sean] doing his own thing.

when the time came I would do battle with my mother for the right to sit at the center of my own life.

The better you are as a parent, the richer the nest you've built, the more difficult it is for your kids to leave. So they have to invent things to dislike about you. And they're brilliant at it.

The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainly not to be trusted.

My mother raised me, and then freed me.