Just Listen

by Sarah Dessen

But being nice wasn’t as easy as it seemed, especially when the rest of the world could be so mean.

I was beginning to see, though, that the unknown wasn’t always the greatest thing to fear. The people who know you best can be riskier, because the words they say and the things they think have the potential to be not only scary but true, as well.

a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment. Which is pretty amazing, when you actually think about it.”

as though history was even better when you had someone to share it with.

There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can ever truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.

I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered.

Because that is what happens when you try to run from the past. It doesn’t just catch up: it overtakes, blotting out the future, the landscape, the very sky, until there is no path left except that which leads through it, the only one that can ever get you home.