Sarah Dessen Quotes

I was deeply uncertain of who I was and who I wanted to be. I really thought I wanted to be a much cooler guy than what I was.

I know who I am by now. And I am my own brand.

I think the whole idea of me was that I wasn't going to be but that I wanted to be, desperately.

As we wrestle with questions of identity, we imitate those actions we think best fill an ambiguity we have within ourselves. And that goes for everyone; no one is free from this condition.

I'm not even sure who I really am sometimes.

I don't even recognize myself sometimes.

I don't really know what my personality is anyway. I don't really have one.

I'm always interested in how people, myself included, have ideas of themselves, of how they thought they would be, or of how they want to be seen. And the older you get, the world keeps telling you different things about yourself. And how people either adjust to those things and let go of adolescent notions. Or they dig in deeper.

I have always felt that I am the sum total of my parts.

I think your self emerges more clearly over time.

I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.

I'm asked all the time in interviews about who I am, and I know a few people my age who have a strong sense of self, but I couldn't say I know myself and sum it up and give it to you in a little package. I don't know myself at all yet.

Who you are vs. who you wish you were: Who wins?

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

I look at that person and I'm like, That's not Kelli White. That's not who I am, who I started out to be.

There's nothing harder than defining oneself.

I've always been fascinated by this idea of who we are versus who we want to be.

You don't know who you are when you're 14.

I am not sultry. I don't know what I am.

Like most people in college, I just wasn't really sure who I was.

I'm a different girl almost every time I look in the mirror.

I see myself as improving. I think I'm a very curious person, and I like that about myself .

You will never rise above the image you have of yourself in your own mind.

The first question in any interactive process with another is: now Who Am I, and Who Do I Want to Be, in relationship to that?

I do know my own mind,' protested Anne. 'The trouble is, my mind changes and then I have to get acquainted with it all over again.