Sarah Dessen Quotes

For years I used to think that you had to hide your emotions to show that you are strong.

I wish I had tougher skin, but I don't.

My natural reaction is to smile through things.

Showing your emotions is not a weakness.

Strength doesn't necessarily come from resisting fear, weakness, or any other feeling and overcoming it. Strength comes from looking at those things straight on--and accepting them as they really are.

Anger is too pathetic. Anger is as weak as fear.

The arrows of malevolence ... however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable part of me; though, whilst I am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed.

It's not a bad thing, is it, to be strong in some ways and fragile and vulnerable in others?

...Hard people are weak people whom nobody wants, and the strong, caring little whether they are wanted or not, have alone that meekness which the common herd mistake for weakness.

If you can fall in love again and again if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical you've got it half licked.

A warrior is not about perfection or victory or invulnerability. He's about absolute vulnerability.

Occasionally I’ll be sitting somewhere and I’ll be listening to someone perhaps not saying the kindest things about me. And I’ll look down at my hand and I’ll sort of pinch my skin to make sure it still has the requisite thickness I know Eleanor Roosevelt expects me to have.

But the day I can't shrug off a twinge of self-pity, is the day I'm washed up for keeps.

I tend to take things personally. But I can only take so much, and then I jump back. I have strong survival skills.

I realized that I'm a soft person. I think I'm sensitive. I wanted very much to be tough and I think movie stars have a certain kind of resilience and toughness to them, but I'm quite a sensitive young lady in some respects.

We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more.

I don't think I have thick skin, but I heal fast. It's easy to break through, but I heal fast.

Love makes me vulnerable. In business I'm tough on myself - I'm like a drill sergeant. If I'm down, I'm used to getting right back up, but when it comes to love, your heart can't do that.

Having a thick skin doesn't mean that you're hard or harsh. I was lucky because I was born with a thick skin. That doesn't mean that things don't bother me, but you have to keep it in perspective.

I'm not an angry woman. I'm not bitter.

I can be extremely vulnerable. People are tough on me because they think I can handle it.

People expect me to cry, but I always laugh when things go wrong.

It is not good to see people who have been pretending strength all their lives lose it even for a minute.

Generally, I play the kind of ethereal, fragile-on-the-outside-but-hard-and-damaged-on-the-inside type.

There are places you go, and they say, 'Take off your dark glasses so we can see your beautiful blue eyes.' And you just want to... you just want to... I dunno, um... thump them.