Sarah Dessen

“I'd known enough people for every minute of the day, and yet still didn't have anyone as my two a.m.”

“Entonces", dice mientras íbamos por la carretera principal, el rompe el silencio, "he estado pensando.""¿Sí?"Él asintió "Realmente necesitas salir conmigo."Parpadeé. "¿Perdona?""Ya sabes. Tú, yo. Un restaurante o una película. Juntos" Él me mira otra vez, cambia de velocidad. "¿Quizás es algo nuevo para ti? Si es así, voy a estar feliz de guiarte""¿Quieres llevarme a ver una película?", Pregunto."Bueno, realmente no", dijo. "Lo que en verdad quiero es que seas mi novia. Pero pensé que si te lo decía así te asustarías."Sentí que mi corazón salto de mi pecho. "¿Siempre eres tan directo sobre este tipo de cosas?""No", dice. Doblamos a la derecha, subiendo por la colina hacia la ciudad, los altos edificios del hospital y la campana U eran visibles desde arriba de la colina. "Pero tengo la sensación de que tienes prisa y estas dejando todo, así que pensé que debería ir al grano""Yo sólo estaré fuera una semana", digo en voz baja."Cierto", dice mientras seguimos subiendo. "Pero he querido hacerlo desde hace tiempos y ya no podía esperar.""¿En serio?", Pregunto. Él asiente con la cabeza. "Como, ¿desde cuándo?"Él lo piensa por un segundo. "El día que me golpeaste en baloncesto.""¿Eso te pareció atractivo?""No exactamente", respondió. "Más bien fue como vergonzoso y humillante. Pero hubo algo en ese momento. . . Era como una pizarra limpia. Ninguna postura o pretensión. Fue como, ya sabes, real”.Estábamos llegando a la ciudad ahora, pasando FrayBake, Luna Blu sólo estaba ha unas cuadras de distancia. "Real", repito.”

“Una vez que amas algo, siempre lo amarás de alguna manera. Tienes que hacerlo. Es como si fuera una parte de ti, para siempre.”

“Aceptar todo lo bueno y lo malo de alguien. Es algo muy bueno a lo cual aspirar. La parte difícil es en verdad hacerlo.”

“Looking at her, I thought again how beautiful she was - even in jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, she was breathtaking. So much so that it was hard to believe she could ever have looked at herself and seen anything else.”

“I'll see you in Dreamland.”

“I hadn't said goodbye. It had been easier, like always, to just disappear, sparing myself the messy details of another farewell. Now, my fingers hovered over my track pad, moving the cursor down to his comment section before I stopped myself. What was the point? Anything I said now would only be an afterthought.Elizabeth who goes by her middle name”

“Esta nana son solo unas pocas palabrasUna simple serie de acordesTranquilo aquí en este cuarto de invitadosPero tu puedes oírla, oírlaDonde sea que puedas irIncluso si te defraudoEsta nana seguirá sonando...”

“Sabia que no había ninguna garantía. Ninguna manera de saber lo que vendría después para mi, o para el, o para cualquiera. Algunas cosas no duran para siempre, pero otras si. Como una buena canción, o un buen libro, o un buen recuerdo que tu puedas sacar y desplegar en tus momentos mas oscuros, oprimiendo las esquinas y mirando detenidamente, esperando que aún reconozcas a la persona que ves allí.”

“¿Todo eso por una palabra?" le preguntó Jess."Una palabra", contestó Ted, completamente serio, "puede cambiar el mundo entero”

“Cuando no puedes salvarte a ti mismo o a tu corazón, ayuda ser capaz de salvar las apariencias.”

“Era rara la facilidad con que un extraño podía asumir semejante familiaridad. Especialmente cuando aquellos que supuestamente te conocían bien, no lo hacían en absoluto.”

“So," he said as we turned onto the main road, the muffler rattling, "I've been thinking.""Yeah?"He nodded. "You really need to go out with me." I blinked. "I'm sorry?""You know. You, me. A restaurant or movie. Together." He glanced over, shifting gears. "Maybe it's a new concept for you? If so, I'll be happy to walk you through it.""You want to take me to a movie?" I asked."Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I though saying that might scare you off.”

“The choices you make now, the people you surround yourself with, they all have the potential to affect your life, even who you are, forever.”

“So you should remember that, when you're thinking about what other people can deal with. Maybe it's not so bad.”

“But as long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.”

“That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.”

“Like so many before them, they didn't care that my dad was only the messenger. They still wanted to shoot him.”

“Don't be afraid, be alive.”

“Don't give me no rotten tomato, 'cause all I ever wanted was your sweet potato.”

“And so, while the rest of the world went on unaware, drinking their coffee, reading the sports page, and picking up their dry cleaning, I leaned forward and kissed Dexter, making a choice that would change everything. Maybe somewhere there was a ripple, a bit of jump, some small shift in the universe, barely noticeable. I didn’t feel it then. I felt only him kissing me back, easing me into the sunlight as I lost myself in the taste of him and felt the world go on, just as it always had, all around us.”

“There was only so much space between us, not even a real distance if measured in miles or feet or even inches, all the things that told you how far you'd come or had left to go. But it was a big space, if only for me. And as I moved forward to him covering it, he waited there on the other side. It was only the last little bit I has to go, but in the end, I knew it would be all I would truly remember. So as I kissed him, bringing this summer and everything else full circle, I let myself fall, and was not scared of the ground I knew would rise up to meet me.”

“The chances we take, knowing no better than to fall or to stand back and hold ourselves in... protecting our hearts with the tightest of grips.”

“Life isn't only about the big moments whether they be good or bad. Maybe it’s about the small things that stretch out to strengthen the most tenuous bound.”

“Honesty in principle was one thing. In someone’s face, it was another.”

“I just do the best I can under the circumstances.”

“But those words were only the middle of the story. There was a beginning here, too.”

“It hadn't even occured to me that somebody would believe mine.”

“This is personal, she'd said. Real. This moment was too, even if you couldn't see it at first glance. It was fake on the outside, but so true within. You only had to look, really look to tell.”

“How it seemed like you could see everything, but certain things were blocked out, hidden.”

“Even if you couldn't see it beneath the surface, molecules were bonding, energy pushing up slowly, as something worked do hare, all alone to grow.”

“You know, when you think about it, that’s kind of a weird thing. I mean it’s meant to be sympathetic, right? But it’s kind of not. Like you’re telling the person there’s nothing unique about what they’re sayingI considered this as a couple of kids on Rollerblades whizzed past, hockey sticks over their shoulders. “Yeah,” I said, finally, “but you could also look at it the other way. Like no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.”

“You punched him by accident.”

“People get mad Annabel. Its not the end of the world.”

“It's a funny feeling, being suddenly airborne. Just as you realize it, it's over, and you're sinking.”

“Told you. Everything sounds better in the car wash.”

“It's a choice, Annabel. And if you make the wrong one, you have only yourself to blame when there are consequences.”

“If you were dead," Owen told her, "you'd have bigger problems than what you were wearing.”

“Life isn't fair," Owen told her. "Get used to it.”

“I didn't want to talk about what happened, so it seemed safest not to talk at all.”

“I wasn't ready for this, but then I probably never would be, and this year, like so much else, wouldn't wait. I had no choice but to get out of my car, with everyone watching and begin in earnest, alone. So I did”

“But that's just the thing thought. Family isn't something that is supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else. Even that picture of James’s family was only the true representation for that day. By the next, something has probably changed. It had to.”

“I wasn’t ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn’t that I wasn’t right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn’t right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn’t come easy for, someone like me.”

“It wasn’t so much that I was positive. I just wasn’t fully subscribing to such a negative way of thinking anymore.”

“When someone starts to change, and it’s obvious, it's sort of natural to wonder why. Right?”

“I had to wonder whether it was possible that this wasn’t already decided for me, and if maybe, just maybe, this was my one last chance to try and prove it. There was no way to know. There never is. But I reached out and took it anyway.”

“But this, too, wasn’t true. Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was so dammed hard.”

“It's only advice. Ignore it if you want.”

“You know,” I said to him. “Pining isn't attractive. On anyone. ... The worst thing you can do if you miss or need someone is let them know it.”

“Don't trust the natives, Olivia has told me, but I was already a step ahead of her. I didn't trust anyone. Not for directions, not for rides, and not for advice either. Sure it sucked to be lost, but I’d long ago realized I preferred it to depending on anyone else to get me where I needed to go. That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened – good bad or anywhere in between – it was always, if nothing else, all your own.”