Quote

You didn't fail. You just opted out. There's a difference.

Sarah Dessen

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sarah Dessen
Age: 54
Born: 1970
Born: June 6
Novelist
Writer
Evanston
Illinois
Differences
Didn
Opted
Fail
Failing
Difference

More quotes by Sarah Dessen

Image
Maybe I'd just figured out there were some things you were better off not knowing
Sarah Dessen
Image
Some things are meant to be broken. Imperfect. Chaotic.
Sarah Dessen
Image
Forgiveness is hard. Acceptance is doable.
Sarah Dessen
Image
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.
Sarah Dessen
Image
It's not always so simple, Haven. Sometimes there isn't a good guy and a bad guy. Sometimes even the ones you want to believe turn out to be liars.
Sarah Dessen
Image
Because anyone that can make you feel that bad about yourself is toxic.
Sarah Dessen
Image
I honestly don't have many creative outlets. I'm not crafty - although motherhood has forced me to try to be - and I can only draw trees, beaches, and clouds. I'm a so-so cook except for deviled eggs. Writing has always been the one thing I feel that I am pretty good at doing. But it's enough, thank goodness.
Sarah Dessen
Image
All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind.
Sarah Dessen
Image
In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible.
Sarah Dessen
Image
Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.
Sarah Dessen
Image
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
Image
It was like when you're a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-mart and it's just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school.
Sarah Dessen
Image
It was hard to remember what the yard had looked like even twelve hours before, undisturbed and pristine. Like it takes so little to change something, but to make you forget the way it once was, as well.
Sarah Dessen
Image
Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It's so easy in the past tense.
Sarah Dessen
Image
It’s the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth.
Sarah Dessen
Image
He'd always had that fearless optimism that made cynics like me squirm. I wondered if it was enough for both of us. I would never know from here, though. And time was passing. Crucial minutes and seconds, each one capable of changing everything.
Sarah Dessen
Image
It's funny how someone's perception of you can be formed without you even knowing it.
Sarah Dessen
Image
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.
Sarah Dessen
Image
I spent a lot of time looking at that picture. Wondering what I’d think of that girl, if I was someone else, seeing how easily she sits in her boyfriend’s lap, laughing, with his arms around her. I would have thought her life was perfect, the way I once thought Cass’s was. It was too easy, I was learning, to just assume things.
Sarah Dessen
Image
I told you, everyone understands a quest.
Sarah Dessen