Bree > Bree's Quotes

“Wherever you will go,
I will let you down,
But this lullaby goes on.”
― Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby

“Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You

“What did it feel like, I wondered, to love someone that much? So much that you couldn't even control yourself when they came close, as if you might just break free of whatever was holding you and throw yourself at them with enough force to easily overwhelm you both.”
― Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby

“I just don't know," I said, my voice sounding bumby, not like mine, "how do you help someone who doesn't want your help. What do you do when you can't do anything?”
― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

“There are some things in this world you rely on, like a sure bet. And when they let you down, shifting from where you've carefully placed them, it shakes your faith, right where you stand.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You

“You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You

“Looking back, it seemed like it should have been harder to lose someone, or have them lose you, especially when they were in the same state, only a few towns over.”
― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

“You couldn't just pick and choose at will when someone depended on you, or loved you. It wasn't 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 truth was I knew, after all those flat January days, that I deserved better. I deserved I love yous and kiwi fruits and warriors coming to my door, besotted with love. I deserved pictures of my face in a thousand expressions, and the warmth of a baby's kick beneath my hand. I deserved to grow, and to change, to become all the girls I could be over the course of my life, each one better than the last.”
― Sarah Dessen

“One week, one strong. One scared, one bold. I was beginning to understand though, that there were no such things as absolutes, not in life, or in people. Like Owen said, it was day by day, if not moment by moment. All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough to shoulder the rest.”
― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

“Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that. It's a lie. It's just something that people say they'll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said ‘friendly' relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it's like breaking up all over again. But messier.”
― Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby

“What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. Cora was right- we had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, as well as the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them were perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You couldn't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build a world from it.
So my true family was not just my mom, lost or found; my dad, gone from the start; and Cora, the only one who had really been there all along. It was Jamie, who took me in without question and gave me a future I once couldn't even imagine; Oliva, who did question, but also gave me answers; Harriet, who, like me, believed she needed no one and discovered otherwise. And then there was Nate.
Nate, who was a friend to me before I even knew what a friend was. Who picked me up, literally, over and over again, and never asked for anything in return except for my word and my understanding. I'd given him one but not the other, because at the time I thought I couldn't, and then proved myself right by doing exactly as my mother had, hurting to prevent from being hurt myself. Needing was so easy: it came naturally, like breathing. Being needed by someone else, though, that was the hard part. But as with giving help and accepting it, we had to do both to be made complete- like links overlapping to form a chain, or a lock finding the right key.
~Ruby (pgs 400-401)”
― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

“You can't just turn your heart off like a faucet; you have to go to the source and dry it out, drop by drop.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You

“When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a colouring book, with the inside not yet completed.”
― Sarah Dessen

“And that was it; it was so easy for her. My own memories did not even belong to me. But I knew she was wrong. I had seen that comet. I knew it as well as I knew my own face, my own hands. My own heart.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You

“I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from her entirely. No matter how strong or weak I was, she was a part of me, as crucial as my own heart. I would never be strong enough, in all my life, to do without her.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You

“I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, truths and half-truths, that kept her always at arm's length, behind a closed door, miles away.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You

“As far as I was concerned, we'd come to a draw: I hadn't wanted to come, and she didn't want me to leave. We were even. But I knew my mother wouldn't see it that way. Lately, we didn't seem to see anything the same.”
― Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You

“There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.”
― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

“Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you.”
― Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby

“Don't think or judge, just listen.”
― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

“No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.”
― Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby

“Some things don't last forever, but some things do. Like a good song, or a good book, or a good memory you can take out and unfold in your darkest times, pressing down on the corners and peering in close, hoping you still recognize the person you see there.”
― Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby

“There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.”
― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

“Sometimes it seems safer to hold it all in, where the only person who can judge is yourself.”
― Sarah Dessen

“It's all in the view. 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 never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count.”
― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

“It's just that...I just think that some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic. It's the universe's way of providing contrast, you know? There have to be a few holes in the road. It's how life is.”
― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

“It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovered--so many locks not enough keys.”
― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

“There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your heart.”
― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

“I knew, in the silence that followed, that anything could happen here. It might be too late: again, I might have missed my chance. But I would at least know I tried, that I took my heart and extended my hand, whatever the outcome.
"Okay," he said. He took a breath. "What would you do, if you could do anything?"
I took a step toward him, closing the space between us. "This," I said. And then I kissed him.”
― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever