Sarah Dessen Quotes

The line cannot be too strongly drawn.

You need boundaries... Even in our material creations, boundaries mark the most beautiful of places, between the ocean and the shore, between the mountains and the plains, where the canyon meets the river.

It cannot be precisely known how any thing is good or bad, till it is precisely known what it is.

In order for answers to become clear, the questions have to be clear.

At least on this side.

The country was made without lines of demarcation and it is nobody's business to create them.

You need to separate the fans and the players.

Whoever's inside is inside; whoever's out is out.

I shall not mingle conjectures with certainties.

Right is not right; so is not so. If right were really right it would differ so clearly from not right that there would be no need for argument. If so were really so, it would differ so clearly from not so that there would be no need for argument.

The wall around the window does not create two worlds.

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.

Truth and clarity are complementary.

We cannot define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into the paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, "You don't know what you are talking about!" The second one says, "What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?"

A boundary is not that at which something stops, but that from which something begins.

I feel there’s no need to overstate.

No time for poetry but exactly what is.

Those walls and bars are there for a reason,” said Crake. “Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases.” “Them?” “Nature and God.” “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” said Jimmy. “I don’t believe in Nature either,” said Crake. “Or not with a capital N.

Pedagogically, we need definitions and borders. They help us get our heads around what we're talking about.

The river itself has no beginning or end. In its beginning, it is not yet the river; in the end it is no longer the river. What we call the headwaters is only a selection from among the innumerable sources which flow together to compose it. At what point in its course does the Mississippi become what the Mississippi means?

The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.

Definition is the companion of clarity; clarity is the guide to your goals.

... what you need more than anything in life is a definite position.

When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No, that's not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.