Sarah Dessen

“Maybe we were all destined to just keep doing the same stupid things, over and over again, never really learning a single thing.”

“I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, and everyone was crying.”

“Everyone laughed, and just like that, the conversation shifted, jumping to another topic. It was fast and furious, the talking, the emotions, the back-and-forth and forth-and-back. I realized that if I tried to focus on it too much, I got overwhelmed. So I just decided to relax into it, bumpy and crazy as it might be, and try for once to just go along for the ride.”

“I bent down over my neighborhood, taking in the people there. At first, they'd just seemed arranged the same way they were everywhere else: in random formations, some in groups, some alone. Then, though, I saw the single figure at the back of my house, walking away from the back door. And another person, a girl, running through the side yard, where the hedge would have been, while someone else, with a badge and flashlight followed. There were three people under the basketball goal, one lying prone on the ground. I took a breath, then moved in closer. Two people were seated on the curb between Dave's and my houses: a few inches away two more walked up the narrow alley to Luna Blu's back door. A couple stood in the driveway, facing each other. And in that empty building, the old hotel, a tiny set of cellar doors had been added, flung open, a figure standing before them. Whether they were about to go down, or just coming up, was unclear, and the cellar itself was a dark square. But I knew what was down below. He'd put me everywhere. Every single place I'd been, with him or without, from the first time we'd met to the last conversation. It was all there, laid out as carefully, as real as the buildings and streets around it. I swallowed, hard, then reached forward, touching the girl running through the hedge. Not Liz Sweet. Not anyone, at that moment, not yet. But on her way to someone. To me.”

“I walked over, my eyes scanning Luna Blu, my house, and Dave's. But it was the building behind them, that empty hotel, that had the tiniest light, provided by one word, written in fluorescent paint. Maybe it wasn't what was once there, in real life. But in this one, it said it all: STAY.”

“From this distance, in the dimness, the model looked surreal, made up of parts filled with buildings, bordered by long stretches of empty space. It reminded me of the way cities and towns look when you are flying at night. You can't make out much. But the places where people have come together, and stayed, are collections of tiny lights, breaking up the darkness.”

“I was running from one problem or place to another, with no time left to study, or sleep, or just breathe. I felt pulled in all directions, fighting to keep all these obligations circling in the air above me. It was only a matter of time before something fell.”

“I felt like I'd been swimming so hard, and the water growing warmer and warmer the closer I got to the top. I wasn't there yet, but now I could see the surface, rippling just beyond my fingers.”

“During this time we've been apart, it's you I've thought of when I'm at my weakest, and you who have pulled me through.”

“If there's one thing I've learned in the last few months, it's that sometimes you just have to close your eyes and jump.”

“For two hours I'd felt myself stretching tighter and tighter, like a rubber band pulled to the point of snapping. And now, I could feel the smaller, weaker part of myself beginning to fray, tiny bits giving way before the big break.”

“She took the sun when it came and the rain the same way.”

“I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell anyone. As long as I didn't say it aloud, it wasn't real.”

“Now I felt like I was drifting, sucked down by an undertow, and too far out to swim back to the shore.”

“She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.”

“We make such messes in this life, both accidently and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn't really make anything any neater. It just masks what is below. It's only when you really dig down deep, go underground, that you can see who you really are.”

“You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right.”

“Lissa lowered her voice and added, "I might not even go to school anyway. I might defer and join the Peace Corps and go to Africa and shave my head and dig latrines.""Shave your head?" I said, because, really, this was the most ludicrous part of the whole thing. "You? Do you have any idea how ugly most people's bare heads are? They've got all kinds of bumps, Lissa. And you won't know until it's too late and you're flat-out bald.”

“But anyone can begin. It was the part with all the promise, the potential, the things I loved. More and more, though, I was finding myself wanting to find out what happened in the end..”

“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 thought saying that might scare you off.”

“No one knew where I was, not a soul, and while I thought this was what I wanted, I realized, in the quiet of that room, that it was the scariest thing of all”

“Because it is so hard, in any life, to believe in what you can’t fully understand.”

“I don’t believe in failure,” she was saying in that confident, breezy way. “Because simply by saying you’ve failed, you’ve admitted you attempted. And anyone who attempts is not a failure. Those who truly fail in my eyes are the ones who never try at all. The ones who sit on the couch and whine and moan and wait for the world to change for them.” – Kiki Sparks”

“He thought about this for a second. "True. But if you never really make friends, you probably don't have anyone to be your 2 a.m. Which would kind of suck. I just looked at him as he stirred his soup, carrots spinning in the liquid. "Your what?" "Two a.m." He swallowed, then said, "You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they're asleep or it's cold or you need to be bailed out of jail...they'll come for you. It's, like, the highest level of friendship.”

“It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again.”

“Yeah. I mean, acknowledging is easy. Something happened or it didn't. But understanding... that's where things get sticky.”

“Maybe if I'd agreed to do the debutante thing like she wanted. Or taken up pageants instead of riding jump bikes with a bunch of grungy boys. I'd always tell her, why can't I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty, or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?”

“I don't know," I said. "Maybe you're right, and all that stuff I think I missed is overrated. Why should I even bother? What's the point really?"He thought for a moment. "Who says there has to be a point?" he asked. "Or a reason. Maybe it's just something you have to do."He moved down to start bagging while I just stood there, letting this sink in. Just something you have to do. No excuse or rationale necessary. I kind of like that.”

“Mayonnaise is a lot like men, it can make everything much better, adding flavor and ease to your life. Or, it can just be sticky and gross and make you nauseous"- "Keeping the Moon”

“If you didn't love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and everything that followed it is part of letting it go.”

“talk was cheap and useless. Action was what mattered. And me, I was moving. Now, again, always.”

“If you don't pay attention to the past, you'll never understand the future.It's all linked together.”

“Watching him, I thought, not for the first time that night, that maybe it should have felt strange to be with him, here, now. And yet it didn’t, at all. That was one of the things about the night. Stuff that would be weird in the bright light of day just wasn’t so much once you passed a certain hour. It was like the dark just evened it all out somehow.”

“Suddenly, I was just sure he was going to kiss me. He was there, I could feel his breath, the ground solid beneath us. But then something crossed his face, a thought, a hesitation, and he shifted slightly. Not now. Not yet. It was something I'd done so often - weighing what I could afford to risk, right at that moment - that I recognized it instantly. It was like looking in a mirror.”

“Oh for God's sake,' Heather said, 'I wish you two would just go out, fail miserably as a couple, and get it over with.”

“Listen,"Kristy said," the truth is,nothing is guranteed. You know better than anybody." She looked at me hard,making sure I knew what she meant.I did."So don't be afraid.Be alive.”

“Then," Kristy continued,nodding at her,"life was very short,literally.But now that I'm better,it seems so long I have to squint to see even the edges of it. It's all in the view,Macy.That's what I mean about forever,too.For any one of us our forever could end in an hour,or a hundred years from now.You can never know for sure,so you'd better make every second count.”

“If he'd been any other boy, and this was any other world, I would have kissed him. Nothing could have stopped me.”

“It wasn't about being happy or unhappy. I just didn't want to be me anymore.”

“Let's just start and see what happens.”

“How it felt to have the world moving beneath me, a hand gripping mine, knowing if I fell, at least I wouldn't do it alone.”

“All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.”

“Together, we looked down at the tiny house, the sole thing on this vast, flat surface. Like the only person living on the moon. It could be either lonely or peaceful, depending on how you looked at it. "It's a start," I said.”

“Like a blinking cursor on an empty page, it was just the first thing. The beginning of the beginning. But at least it was done.”

“It was kind of soothing, these sounds of lives being lived all around me, for better or for worse. And there I was, in the middle of them all, newly reborn and still waiting for mine to begin.”

“It’s you who i have thought of when i am at my weakest & you who have pulled me through”

“Fine...a word that you said when someone asked how you were but didn't really care to know the truth.”

“Failing sucks. But it's better than the alternative.""Which is?""Not even trying." Now he did look at me, straight on. "Life's short, you know?”

“I was heading off to my new world. But I was taking a part of my past, and the future, along with me for the ride.”

“I drove off, with my friends watching me go, all of them grouped on Lissa's hood. As I pulled onto the road, I glanced into the rearview and saw them: they were waving, hands moving through the air, their voices loud, calling out after me. The square of that mirror was like a frame, holding this picture of them saying good-bye, pushing me forward, before shifting gently out of sight, inch by fluid inch, as I turned away.”