“Maybe not," she said as we came to the car. "But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is ialways the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“Sometimes things don't turn out the way you want them to, Haven. Sometimes the people you choose to believe are wrong.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“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, quote from That Summer
“My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“It was just perfect, just right all at once.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“I knew that it wouldn’t last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“Everything looks different when you're older, not staring up at the world but down upon it.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“Some things you don't have to tell. Some things, between sisters, are understood.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“At every wedding someone stays home.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“It’s funny how one summer can change everything.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“He doesn’t love me. He might still love me as I was at fifteen, when I didn’t know any better. When I trusted everyone. I’m not that person any more. He’s just a boy. He was the first to really hurt me, but he’s just a boy. There were a lot of them.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“The first boy was always the hardest.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“We can’t be sad about it forever, you know? We’ve got to think back to the good times and just remember them; that’s all we can do. We can’t worry about the past or what happened at the end, any more. I can’t and you can’t.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“A united front announcing a split.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“I knew it then. For me and her, there wasn’t any time left to think back to that summer and the beach and a boy who charmed us and disappointed us. There was only what stretched out ahead, years full of new summers and promise, with all the time in the world left to start again. My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“I’d never been in love, never felt that surge of feeling or that fall from its graces. I’d only watched as others weathered it: my mother in her garden, Sumner on the front lawn all those years ago, Ashley sobbing from the other side of a wall. I sat kerbside with my best friend and held her, trying to shoulder some of the hurt. There’s only so much you can do, in these situations.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“My father’s new life was progressing as planned, one neat step at a time. And I felt it, again, that same feeling I got whenever another change or shift in my life was announced to me – selling the house, Ashley’s tantrums, now the baby – that need to dig in my heels and prepare myself for the next shock and its aftermath. I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“Sometimes love can be an ugly thing.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“Sometimes there isn't a good guy or a bad guy. Sometimes even the ones you want to believe turn out to be liars.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
“The tight, throbbing feeling in my throat made me want to start sobbing, to break down, right there on an unfamiliar corner in front of a house just like my own. Everything seemed so out of control, as if even running the streets wouldn’t save me. I wondered if this was how she felt running wild at night, this lost, loose feeling that no consequence could be so harmful as the sense of staying where you were, or of being who you are. I wanted to be somewhere else, out of the range of my mother’s voice and ears, of Ashley’s pouty looks, of the News Channel 5 viewing area. A place where the sight of my sobbing would tie me to no one and no one to me.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer
Sarah Dessen
Born place: in Illinois, The United States
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“At the edge of heartbreak, we both take a leap into the unknown...That's when we see it, a buoy callled friendship.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade
“When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have had to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic I cannot afford to be less than an artist.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from Collected Works: Wise Blood / A Good Man is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear it Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays and Letters
“Last time she had been here, the room had been pastel, romantic and soft. Now it was icily white. It was urban, out of a slick magazine, as if some cold, successful woman lived here with two possessions and an empty refrigerator.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, quote from The Voice on the Radio
“Cultivate solidity. You are somebody; you are something. You are a positive factor for your family, for society, for the world. You have to recover yourself, to be yourself. You have to become solid again. You can practice solidity in everyday life. Every step, every breath you take should help you become more solid. When you have solidity, freedom is there too.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, quote from You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment
“While I have the floor, here's a question that's been bothering me for some time. Why do so few writers of heroic or epic fantasy ever deal with the fundamental quandary of their novels . . . that so many of them take place in cultures that are rigid, hierarchical, stratified, and in essence oppressive? What is so appealing about feudalism, that so many free citizens of an educated commonwealth like ours love reading about and picturing life under hereditary lords?
Why should the deposed prince or princess in every clichéd tale be chosen to lead the quest against the Dark Lord? Why not elect a new leader by merit, instead of clinging to the inbred scions of a failed royal line? Why not ask the pompous, patronizing, "good" wizard for something useful, such as flush toilets, movable type, or electricity for every home in the kingdom? Given half a chance, the sons and daughters of peasants would rather not grow up to be servants. It seems bizarre for modern folk to pine for a way of life our ancestors rightfully fought desperately to escape.”
― David Brin, quote from Glory Season
The Garden of Forkin...
Lie Down in Darkness
The Storyteller's Da...
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Stealing HarperBookQuoters 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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