Sarah Dessen Quotes

My friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in places I used to play. And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on. I’m just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.

Let him who has once perceived how much that, which has been discarded, excels that which he has longed for, return at once, and seek again that which he despised.

I was always a 'grass is greener' kind of guy.

It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.

Nostalgia is a necessary thing, I believe, and a way for all of us to find peace in that which we have accomplished, or even failed to accomplish. At the same time, if nostalgia precipitates actions to return to that fabled, rosy-painted time, particularly in one who believes his life to be a failure, then it is an empty thing, doomed to produce nothing but frustration and an even greater sense of failure.

I don't belong. Not here. Not now. I have to get back there. The bet was rigged, he made me believe. Now there's darkness in my soul. I want to die . . . again. But I choose to come back, why?

How come I end up where I started How come I end up where I belong... You used to be alright What happened?

There are times when I wish I could go back and change the course of my life. Make different choices...But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on. Do you remember that I told you that at Spence?

I can never be the hero now. You have to be young and all that stuff. I used to be the hero.

The woman I was seems hopelessly naive. I envy her.

nothing's news. it's the same old thing in disguise. only one thing comes without a disguise and you only see it once, or maybe never. like getting hit by a freight train. makes us realize that all our moaning about long lost girls in gingham dresses is not so important after all.

..I fancied you'd return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.) I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

Being Lutheran, Mother believed that self-pity is a deadly sin and so is nostalgia, and she had no time for either

... 'I've been doing everything for an awfully long time, and I've seen and lived as hard as I could, and it's been unbelievable, I tell you, unbelievable. But now I have the feeling everything's gliding away from me, and I don't remember, and I don't care, and yet now is right when I need it!'. [pp. 84-85]

I enjoyed every bit of the evening. I may not drink scotch or smoke a cheroot again, but I shall always cherish the fact that I did those things. The adventure is well worth the disappointing experience.

My chest got this weird feeling, like when you stare into the eyes of a little baby and the baby looks back up at you and you can feel how pure and innocent it is, so much that it makes your stomach feel empty - probably 'cause you realize you used to be pure like that, too, and now you're not.

The Past is such a curious Creature To look her in the Face A Transport may receipt us Or a Disgrace-.

I got out this diary, & read as one always does read one's own writing, with a kind of guilty intensity.

When you're touched by magic, nothing's ever quite the same again. What really makes me sad is all those people who never have the chance to know that touch. They're too busy, or they just don't hold with make-believe, so they shut the door without really knowing it was there to be opened in the first place.

If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors.

What I wished more than anything was that the thing hadn't happened at all, and I thought that by not mentioning it I'd be doing everyone else a favor.

And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.

I never wanted this kind of life that Im still living.

Alone in my room, wrapped in a blanket, I whimpered and talked aloud to myself, recalling the lost glory of my youth when I considered myself, and was considered by others, a bright and capable person. It seemed that was all gone now.

it is a lean employment of time to brood on what might have happened along some other turning.