Sarah Dessen Quotes

You have to walk in the other guy's moccasins. You have to think what they think. If you want to bring somebody onto your side, you have to figure out what motivates them. What do they need?

It is easier to speak to those who have had similar experiences than to those who are as yet ignorant.

In the long course of history, having people who understand your thought is much greater security than another submarine.

I think, really, that the only way a person can open their heart to someone who is so much another is really by knowing them... whether that's in a classroom, or a soccer team, or a food pantry, or any of those things. I mean, we're kind of more alike than we are different.

You know, we have our differences, everybody does, honest, real differences, but I do believe strongly that we as neighbors are drawn together far more than we're driven apart.

I try to communicate in a way that allows people in on what's going on. What's better than references to popular culture?

The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

Probably above all other things, I am interested as a writer in making a connection, interested in the parts of all of us that connect.

People can transcend and overcome their differences and be very easily bonded.

You always have to come from the element of 'What do you have in common?' first. It makes it easier to work through your differences.

When you are in someone's home, in their bed, you see the world from their eyes. You understand 'the other' is not so other.

When you connect to someone on a human level, and you get to know about them, you can begin to love the things that make them different. That's when fear dissipates, and that's when we can live the life that we're all supposed to be living.

There's not many people that I can't relate to and can't share experiences with.

I want someone to look at me and find a little of themselves in me.

Meeting at our fault lines is much more interesting to me than meeting at shared values. I'm not trying to sell you something. If anything, I'm trying to show you where we are. There is nothing to hide.

That really has been my message over the years: 'Hey, we're all in this together, so let's laugh about it a little, please.' It adds perspective to an argument if you know where you're coming from.

It's interesting to go places and see that, at the end of the day, people just want to feel safe, and what that looks like to them varies... but that was encouraging to see that there is more common ground than perhaps I realized.

I've always found that if you listen to people you can find common ground.

It's an honest place to be if you don't understand someone else's experience, but there's no way for the other to understand if a conversation or an explanation isn't made.

I think our music is more about seeing ourselves in each other and trying to find a more humanistic viewpoint for the world.

Connect deeply with others. Our humanity is the one thing that we all have in common.

Love and trust, in the space between what’s said and what’s heard in our life, can make all the difference in the world.

The way to go from discord to harmony is to go from concentrating on differences to concentrating on similarities.

As we form our individual opinions of our fellow man, let us base them on our similarities and not our differences.

Sometimes you think certain details are things that only you would notice, so it's a great thing to feel like you're not by yourself and people understand where you're coming from.