""It was so easy to disown what you couldn't recognize, to keep yourself apart from things that were foreign and unsettling. The only person you can be sure to control, always, is yourself. Which is a lot to be sure of, but at the same time, not enough.""
— Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride)

"People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"We sit and listen and are enthralled anew, for good stories, it seems, never lose their magic."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"No one asks how or what I am doing. They could not care less. We’re all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they’d like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance.
A fissure forms in the vessel. I’m cracking open.
--Libba Bray"
— Libba Bray

"I run after her, not really giving chase. I’m running because I can, because I must.
Because I want to see how far I can go before I have to stop.
"
— Libba Bray

""I know because I read...Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating.""
— Libba Bray

"There are no safe choices, Miss Temple. Only other choices."
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"The vicar, whose name is Reverend Waite, leads us in prayers that all begin with 'O Lord' and end with our somehow not being worthy-sinners who have always been sinners and will forever more be sinners until we die. It isn't the most optimistic outlook I've ever heard but we're encouraged to keep trying anyway."
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"The trouble with morning is that it comes well before noon."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"If God has nothing better to do than punish schoolgirls for a bit of tomfoolery, then I've no use for God. "
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

""Age is artificial. It's soulless. It doesn't matter one bit.""
— Laurie Faria Stolarz (Bleed)

"Society. The same society, I might add, that dictates that little girls should always be sugar and spice and everything nice, which encourages them not to be assertive. And that, in turn, then leads to low self-esteem, which can lead to eating disorders and increased tolerance and acceptance of domestic, sexual, and substance abuse."

"You get all that from a pink Onesie?" Leah said after a moment."
— Sarah Dessen

"An ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last word."
— Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride)

"You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasnt like a light switch, easy to turn on or off. If you were in, you were in. Out, you were out."
— Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride)

"The basic fact is that no, this isnt ideal. Very few things are. Sometimes, you have to manufacture your own history. Give fate a push,so to speak.
-Heidi"
— Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride)

"So maybe it wasnt the fairy tale. But those stories werent real anyway. Mine were. "
— Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride)

"It shouldn't be easy to be amazing. then everything would be. It's the thing you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder--or impossible-- to lose."
— Sarah Dessen (Along for the Ride)