“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.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“I was worn out, broken: He had taken almost everything. But he'd been all I'd had, all this time. And when the police led him away, I pulled out of the hands of all these loved one, sobbing, screaming, everything hurting, to try and make him stay.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“I wondered if he ever thought of me, and hated the pang I felt when I told myself he didn't.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“After everything that happened, how could I miss him? But I did, I did.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“It's so easy to get caught up in what people expect of you. Sometimes, you can just lose yourself.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“Behind the camera, I was invisible. When I lifted it up to my eye it was like I crawled into the lens, losing myself there. and everything else fell away.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her eyes, downing vodka and sobbing uncontrollably. "We can't heal you at Evergreen", the very somber voiceover said. "But we can help you to heal yourself." It had become our own running joke, applicable to almost anything.
"Hey Cass, "I'd say, "hand me that toothpaste."
"Caitlin," she'd say, her voice dark and serious. "I can't hand you the toothpaste. But I CAN help you hand the toothpaste to yourself.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“And she was good to me: strong, fun, and fiercely loyal. And if I didn't have many other friends because of her-most girls were intimidated by her looks, or thought she was too pushy, or just flat-out feared for their boyfriends-it never bothered me. I never missed having a wide, thick circle of girlfriends: Rina was more than enough. We were comfortable with each other's flaws and weaknesses, so we stuck together and kept to ourselves.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“Rogerson," I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, "where would I find the pelagic zone?"
"In the open sea," he said. "Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“It's funny how someone's perception of you can be formed without you even knowing it.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell anyone. As long as I didn't say it aloud, it wasn't real.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“I had this wild thought that he was the only one in all this chaos who was just like me, and that was comforting and profound all at once.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“Your mother won a special reward," she told me, "because everyone had a head in her pictures. We all applauded.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“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.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“Wake up, Caitlin, Mr. Lensing had said. But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“What was the name of Pygmalion's sister?"
She blinked, twice, obviously surprised. "Ummm," she said, keeping her eyes on me. "I don't know."
Rogerson did," I told her. "Rogerson knew everything.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“I took his wildness from him and tried to fold it into myself, filling up the empty spaces all those second place finishes left behind.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“It’s so easy to get caught up in what people expect of you. Sometimes, you can just lose yourself”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable,walking through this life half-sleeping,everything at arm's length or farther away.
I understood those mermaids.I didn't care if they sang to me.All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again,pulling me upward into light,to drown.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“Well, it's New Year's now but I don't feel that way anymore. I wonder if you do either. Something's happening to me. It's like I'm shrinking smaller and smaller and I can't stp it. There's just os much wrong that I can't imagine the shame in admitting even the tiniest part of it. When you left it was like there was this huge gap to fill, but instead of spreading wide enough to do it I just fell right in, and I'm still falling. Like I'm half-asleep, and I can't wake up, can't wake up....”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“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.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“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.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“Can she be divorced?" I asked. "And famous for her commercials
and ideas?"
She can be anything," Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled
face so solemn, as if
she knew she was the first to tell me. "And so can you.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“There were moments - when Jeopardy came on, in the car during radio trivia challenges, or for practically any question I couldn't answer in any subject - that Rogerson simply amazed me. I started to seek out facts, just to stump him, but it never worked. He was that sharp.
"In physics," I sprung on him as we sat in the Taco Bell drive-through, "what does the capital letter W stand for?"
"Energy," he said, handing me my burrito.
Sitting in front of my parents' house as he kissed me goodnight: "Which two planets are almost identical in size?"
"Duh," he said, smoothing my hair back, "Venus and Earth."
"Rogerson," I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, "where would I find the pelagic zone?"
"In the open sea," he said. "Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“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, quote from Dreamland
“And that was as far as he got before i heard it. The thumping of footsteps, running up the lawn toward me: It seemed like I could hear it through the grass, like leaning your ear to a railroad track and feeling the train coming, miles away. As the noise got closer I could hear ragged breaths, and then a voice.
It was my mother.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“I jammed my hand in my jacket pocket, bracing myself fo the next hit, and fel something. Something grainy and samll, sticking to the tips of my fingers: the sand from Commons Park.
Oh Cass, I thought. I miss you so, so much.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“We laughed ourselves silly, taking back our shared past, gently, piece by piece.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland
“-they were still practicing the fiendishly difficult pattern at the end of the act where the diagonal lines of swans cross over and dissolve to form three groups: unequal groups, since the number seventeen is notoriously difficult to divide by three.”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from A Company of Swans
“A man of the present day, whether he believes in the divinity of Christ or not, cannot fail to see that to assist in the capacity of tzar, minister, governor, or commissioner in taking from a poor family its last cow for taxes to be spent on cannons, or on the pay and pensions of idle officials, who live in luxury and are worse than useless; or in putting into prison some man we have ourselves corrupted, and throwing his family on the streets; or in plundering and butchering in war; or in inculcating savage and idolatrous superstitious in the place of the law of Christ; or in impounding the cow found on one's land, though it belongs to a man who has no land; or to cheat the workman in a factory, by imposing fines for accidentally spoiled articles; or making a poor man pay double the value for anything simply because he is in the direst poverty;--not a man of the present day can fail to know that all these actions are base and disgraceful, and that they need not do them. They all know it. ”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from The Kingdom of God Is Within You
“How did we forget these lessons from the past? How did we go from knowing that the best athletes in the ancient Greek Olympics must consume a plant-based diet to fearing that vegetarians don’t get enough protein? How did we get to a place where the healers of our society, our doctors, know little, if anything, about nutrition; where our medical institutions denigrate the subject; where using prescription drugs and going to hospitals is the third leading cause of death? How did we get to a place where advocating a plant-based diet can jeopardize a professional career, where scientists spend more time mastering nature than respecting it? How did we get to a place where the companies that profit from our sickness are the ones telling us how to be healthy; where the companies that profit from our food choices are the ones telling us what to eat; where the public’s hard-earned money is being spent by the government to boost the drug industry’s profits; and where there is more distrust than trust of our government’s policies on foods, drugs and health? How did we get to a place where Americans are so confused about what is healthy that they no longer care?”
― T. Colin Campbell, quote from The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-term Health
“Centuries pass when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such tremendous importance take place that the world is never the same again .... Now's the time to be alive-- to see it happen, to be a part of it. That makes the blood race, and each breath is an adventure.”
― David Eddings, quote from The Belgariad, Vol. 1: Pawn of Prophecy / Queen of Sorcery / Magician's Gambit
“Urgh, her,' Suki groaned. "Yeah, she's still with us. And she's still a pain in the culo. I'm learning Spanish,' she said brightly. "Culo means ass.”
― Sarah Alderson, quote from Losing Lila
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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