Sarah Dessen Quotes

Most of my favourite moments in film have been when I've had an opportunity to say something from scratch, something original, whether I jotted down a few lines or it came out in improvisation.

Life would be much easier if I just wrote the same book over and over again. But I'm not interested in doing that.

I didn't want to write the same book over and over.

I don't write the same book over and over - I think if I did that, I would stop writing. I couldn't write a series with the same character, and I couldn't write a romance novel over and over again that takes place at a different beach every year. That's not who I am.

I love the stories that have come before, that we know of. I think for me it's always more interesting to start from square one and you take the fundamental pillars of the character and, around that, try to create something new and different.

I try not to repeat a story. I try not to repeat an emotion. I want it to be all sort of new for the viewers and to challenge myself as a writer, so there's always pressure. What else can you come up with?

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

Any time a writer thinks he has all the answers to how someone should talk or react or end a scene, it's a spontaneity-killer.

A lot of things you just stumble into: relationships or ways of putting characters opposite one another that really worked. So then it's not always so much about imitating other people, but imitating yourself, at least in your thinking.

Our responsibility as filmmakers is to make things that are fresh, unique and original.

I fear becoming formulaic. Some of my books are.

I don't write the same book twice.

I think it is more important to tell a story rather than follow any trend; that is a less bold way to go. If you do that [follow trends] you are just trying to ride on the coat tails of someone else's success.

The danger with success in television is "Haven't we shot this episode before? Didn't we shoot this scene two years ago?" I think it's really hard to just take the risk from season to season and not be afraid to give the audience something completely different, and trust that they'll come with you.

I find it inspiring and I always think when I'm working on something new, whether it's a new kind of character or a new kind of story or new kind of camera, it gets my creative wheels spinning.

I think it's just the challenge. It's not that all my life I've wanted to do characters [in Marvel] , because I never particularly thought about it, but the challenge of saying, "How could they be done differently that may be more absorbing or more effective?"

I felt, if I'm going to take on some of the most overdone material, which is men and women and affairs and betrayal of friends, I had better have a new take on it. I think my films come from a desperation not to be boring.

You can always find ways to make it different, as long as it's a really well-written script and well-written character.

I think the characters are supposed to be an open book, blank canvas.

I began as a dramatist in the theater, so I'm always thinking about how a story moves, what it looks like, how to engage the senses, how dialogue sounds, what feels authentic and sounds real, what's funny, how to build distinctive and original characters - all the aspects of playwriting, scene-building, the architecture of dramatizing.

Originality is also very important to a writer. And all of the writers I've mentioned, of course, are original, but it's important to me that every book that I do be really a completely fresh and new look at the world. And of course, that makes it frightening to start a new book because you can't really depend upon what you've done with previous books.

I'm a more skilled writer now, but after 23 books it's harder to be fresh and that's really important to me. I don't want to write the same thing over and over again.

I think in every character there are aspects of yourself that you bring to it. But then it would be really boring to just play yourself.

I looked at the world of books and just went, Oh my gosh, if I'm writing novels, I'm on the same shelves as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Petronius - whereas with comics, they've only been doing them for a hundred years, and there's stuff that nobody's done before. I think I'll go off and do some of the stuff no one's ever done before.

Mainly, I try not to think about my readers as I write - I just think of my characters and myself - If they're interesting to me, my hope is that they'll be interesting to others as well.