Sara Zarr Quotes & Sayings

I can be human to strangers and coworkers, just not to the people who actually care about me. — Sara Zarr

He said I didn't need to save him."
"But you want to."
"Yeah. But I can't. Right?"
"Probably not. Usually not. — Sara Zarr

Is that the destiny of all friendships, no matter how good they are? To die out or fade away? To end? — Sara Zarr

I looked at my hand resting on the shelf of the prop cabinet, thinking of the scars that were there whether anyone could see them or not. — Sara Zarr

I'm not really a plot writer - I'm more interested in the characters and sort of small events that propel the story forward. — Sara Zarr

You didn't call me last night."
"Was I supposed to?"
He looked down. "Just figured now that you had my number ... Kept my phone on all night, just in case." He laughed. "I started to worry that it didn't work. Actually went out to a pay phone to test it."
"You could have called me. That way you left me after lunch on Saturday, I figured ... " I ended there and shrugged, not wanting to be mad at him or get into any kind of argument. "Anyway, after auditions I went to the gym with Steph, and I'm so behind in my homework it's not even funny." Of course I'd punched in his number about eighteen times without actually ever calling him. I wasn't sure what I'd say, and worried about how I'd feel if he didn't answer.
"I shouldn't have left like that on Saturday."
"Yeah, well." I waved my hands. "Don't worry about it. I have to finish getting ready. There's cereal and stuff ... just make yourself at home. — Sara Zarr

It's a jagged thing in my throat, how much I miss her. — Sara Zarr

My first job is to write the characters as full and authentic people as well as I can. — Sara Zarr

We'd need a miracle," he says. "A real one. Do you think those happen anymore? — Sara Zarr

I'm always in a place that is sincere but conflicted about different things that come with being a Christian and being an active, churchgoing Christian. — Sara Zarr

I'm remembering how this works. How life doesn't have to be only anxiety about what's gone wrong or could go worng, and complaints about the world around you. How a person you're excited about can remind you there's stuff going on beyond ... routine oil changes and homework. Stuff that matters. Stuff to look forward to. — Sara Zarr

When my characters are questioning things, it's not me leading up to an answer; it's me asking those same questions and letting the characters' lives unfold and seeing where it takes them. — Sara Zarr

His voice just shot through me. It's amazing, the things your body will do just when you don't want them to: heart speeding up, fingers aching. I'd always liked his voice, low and laid-back, the kind of voice that made you listen, a voice that still caused me to teeter when I heard it saying my old nickname. — Sara Zarr

I get a message from my dad. In the mood I'm in, I tear up to see his name in my inbox, and imagine him down the hall in bed, propped on pillows, emailing me.
"Hon,
Enjoyed our gelato date the other night. I just want to say I'm proud of you for a lot of reasons. Also, I've attached a picture of my foot."
He's such a weirdo goofball. I love him. — Sara Zarr

The kind of life I want is to be a person who would get a personal note every day. — Sara Zarr

I grew up in San Francisco in the 1970s. We were part of a church that belonged to the California Jesus movement. — Sara Zarr

I remember being in high school and listening to Vivaldi's 'Winter' and being so overwhelmed with emotion. — Sara Zarr

counted because things in my life had a way of disappearing on me, and I'd learned not to trust what I thought was there. What — Sara Zarr

Because love, love is never finished. It circles and circles, the memories out of order and not always complete. — Sara Zarr

There's a lot that is awful. That's the struggle of getting old. To make sure you don't let what's hard ... obscure the beauty. — Sara Zarr

The world was full of beauty.
She wanted to grab hold of it and take it down into her bones. Yet always it seemed beyond her grasp. Sometimes only by a little, like now. The thinnest membrane.
Usually, though, by miles.
She couldn't expect to be that kind of happy all the time. She knew that.
But sometimes you could. Sometimes you should be allowed a tiny bit of joy that should stay with you for more than five minutes. That wasn't too much to ask. To have a moment like this, and be able to hold on to it.
To cross that membrane, and feel alive. — Sara Zarr

I have no desire to go back to San Francisco. — Sara Zarr

Live in the present. Take care of the relationships in front of you now. Most friendships have a natural life, and when they've lived that out, you'll know. — Sara Zarr

It's not words, so much, just my mind going blank and thoughts reaching up up up, me wishing I could climb through the ceiling and over the stars until I can find God, really see God, and know once and for all that everything I've believed my whole life is true, and real. Or, not even everything. Not even half. Just the part about someone or something bigger than us who doesn't lose track. I want to believe the stories, that there really is someone who would search the whole mountainside just to find that one lost thing that he loves, and bring it home. — Sara Zarr

Readers want a story, not a pattern. It's the specifics of a story that make it really ping our various reader radars. — Sara Zarr

I didn't say it didn't feel good..." They never tell you this part in sex ed, how to talk about what you did and why you did it and what you thought about it, before, during, and after. — Sara Zarr

There are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark ... Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. — Sara Zarr

A know a place called New Beginnings, but I don't think it works quite like that. You can't just erase everything that came before. — Sara Zarr

Can it really be love if we don't talk that much, don't see each other? Isn't love something that happens between people who spend time together and know each other's faults and take care of each other? ... In the end, I decide that the mark we've left on each other is the color and shape of love. — Sara Zarr

The mark we've left on each other is the color and shape of love. That's the unfinished business between us. because love, love is never finished. — Sara Zarr

It came down to the smallest things, really, that a person could do to say I'm sorry, to say it's okay, to say I forgive you. The tiniest of declarations that built, one on top of the other, until there was something solid beneath your feet. And then ... and then. Who knew? — Sara Zarr

When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting. — Sara Zarr

Sometimes rescue comes to you. It just shows up, and you do nothing. Maybe you deserve it, maybe you don't. But be ready, when it comes, to decide if you will take the outstretched hand and let it pull you ashore. — Sara Zarr

I tried his cell over and over but he never answered. Then I'd call just to hear his voice on the outgoing message, until eventually that was gone too. — Sara Zarr

I was a 'learn by doing' writer - I never took any formal writing classes. So it took a long time to figure things out and find my voice. — Sara Zarr

In a way, "failure" is just another word for "the journey," for not being there yet but on the way. It's the road we walk on to get wherever it is we're trying to go. — Sara Zarr

As much I love to imagine being alone in an orderly lab, I also know you can't stay in there forever and expect to do good work. Life is one of those experiments meant to be conducted in a stimulating, messy environment. — Sara Zarr

I wanted to be free to write the way I wanted to write, and my impression of Christian publishing, at least in fiction, was that there wasn't room for what I wanted to write. — Sara Zarr

One of my favorite authors is Robert Cormier. He was a devout Catholic and a very nice man, which might not be the impression you get from reading his books. — Sara Zarr

Making lists of favorite things is, for me, a task ridden with anxiety. What if I've accidentally excluded something I love? What if I discover something new tomorrow that I love even more? — Sara Zarr

It's as if once you hit high school, you're programmed, like a robot, to be an asshole to your parents. — Sara Zarr

It's just so out of control. Life, I mean. The way it flies off in all these different directions without your permission. — Sara Zarr

I don't like to do too much psychological research because it might turn a character into a patchwork. — Sara Zarr

That's how you know you really trust someone, I think; when you don't have to talk all the time to make sure they still like you or prove that you have interesting stuff to say. — Sara Zarr

Family or love or romance, whatever it is, is not restricted to perfect people. If it were, it wouldn't exist. All of that comes out in my work in some way. — Sara Zarr

That's what music did. It made you feel.
...
Music, her grandfather always told her, was language. A special language, a gift from the Muses, something all people are born understanding but few people can thoroughly translate. — Sara Zarr

It makes me think of Lazarus. He must have had those shadows after his miracle. You don't spend time in the tomb without it changing you, and everyone who was waiting for you to come out. — Sara Zarr

No one measures a life in weeks and days. You measure life in years and by the things that happen to you. — Sara Zarr

I had them all fooled into believing I was normal and well-adjusted, a rock of sensibility who could always be counted on to have a positive attitude. — Sara Zarr

Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn't. They're like a song you hate but can't ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life, snippets of lyrics and lines of music floating up and then receding, a crazy kind of tide that never stops. — Sara Zarr

What brings two people together anyway? — Sara Zarr

Forgetting isn't enough. You can paddle away from the memories and think they are gone. But they will keep floating back, again and again and agian. They circle you, like sharks. Until, unless, something, someone? Can do more than just cover the wound. — Sara Zarr

Why do people...we...why do we drag around like life is so awful?' Why did they forget that there was so much to love? He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'I guess...because there's a lot that is awful. That's the struggle of getting old. To make sure you don't let what's hard or painful or whatever obscure the beauty. — Sara Zarr

The Lord doesn't give a person more than he knows they can bear. — Sara Zarr

I'm still going to love you, always. And in the rock-paper-scissors of life, love is rock. fear, anger, everthing else ... no contest. — Sara Zarr

I played the clarinet, and my sister played the violin ... If we'd had the discipline and the passion, maybe we could have been good. — Sara Zarr

My parents met in music school and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles. — Sara Zarr

I always felt that church is where I'm going to find my community and people to live my life with. — Sara Zarr

There were about ten years of trying, failing, trying again, suffering rejection, etc. My first published book, 'Story of a Girl', was the fourth book I wrote. — Sara Zarr

Some people come into your life and leave a mark. — Sara Zarr

I didn't 'decide' to write YA, per se. But every time I thought of a story, it featured characters 15, 16, 17. — Sara Zarr

It's like a Venn diagram of tragedy. — Sara Zarr

You were never what I wanted to forget. — Sara Zarr

Everyone has an identity crisis when they are 16 or 17 years old. — Sara Zarr

The past only had whatever power you gave it; life was what you made it and if you wanted something different from what you had, it was up to you to make it happen. — Sara Zarr

I understand that you can never have the whole picture; inevitably, there's stuff you don't know, can't know. But when it comes to Cameron I always want more than I have, would like to be able to take hold of at least one or two more pieces, if only because I'm convinced there are parts of myself inside them. — Sara Zarr

I wonder how you're supposed to know the exact moment when there's no more hope. — Sara Zarr

My dad died, I write. almost a year ago. Car accident. My hand is shaking; my eyes sting and fill. I add Not his fault before pushing the notebook and pen back across the table, wiping a hand across my cheeks.
As he reads, my impulse is to reach out, grab the notebook, run outside, dump it in the trash, bury it in the snow, throw it under the wheels of a passing car - something, something, so I can go back fifteen seconds when this part ofme was still shut away and private. Then I look at Ravi's face again, and the normally white white whites of his eyes are pink. This causes major disruption to my ability to control the flow of my own tears. I see myself when I look at him right now: he's reflecting my sadness, my broken heart, back to me.
He takes the pe, writes, and slides it over. You'd think it's something epic from the way it levels my heart. It isn't.
I'm really sorry, Jill.
Four little words. — Sara Zarr

We'd walk home together in the foggy summer night and I'd tell her about sex; the good stuff, like how it could be warm and exciting
it took you away
and the not-so-good things, like how once you showed someone that part of yourself, you had to trust them one thousand percent and anything could happen. Someone you thought you knew could change and suddenly not want you, suddenly decide you made a better story than a girlfriend. Or how sometimes you might think you wanted to do it and then halfway through or afterward realize no, you just wanted the company, really; you wanted someone to choose you, and the sex part itself was like a trade-off, something you felt like you had to give to get the other part. I'd tell her that and help her decide. I'd be a friend. — Sara Zarr

I'm talking about the ones who, for whatever reason, are as much a part of you as your own soul. Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business.
Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. If you had a lifetime to talk, there would still be things left unsaid. — Sara Zarr

And I don't just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you - the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who crowned you best friend. It's the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people. — Sara Zarr

When a young reader tells you that they'd never finished a book outside of school until they read yours, or that they really needed to hear something that one of your characters says or thinks ... that's just rewarding and humbling. — Sara Zarr

That's how life feels to me. Everyone is doing it; everyone knows how. To live and be who they are and find a place, find a moment. I'm still waiting. — Sara Zarr

What did it feel like, I wondered, to be kissed like that right out in public? Not like some passionate tongue-wrestling thing, just a kiss to declare: We are each other's. I'd never been kissed like that, not by him or anyone else. No one had declared me his, not for the whole world to see, anyway. — Sara Zarr

don't mistake a new place for a new you. — Sara Zarr

Life was mostly made up of things you couldn't control, full of surprises, and they weren't always good. Life wasn't what you made it. You were what life made you. — Sara Zarr

Life needed a fast forward button. Because there were days you just don't want to live through, not again, but they kept coming around and you were powerless to stop time or speed it up or do anything to keep from having to face it. — Sara Zarr

Was it only because he happened to be the one who came along when he did? Could it have been anyone? Or was there something about him, that I liked and cared at? — Sara Zarr

We had each other. I never needed anyone else. That's the difference between you and me. You need all these people around you. Your friends, your boyfriend, everyone. Every single person has to like you. I only ever needed one person. Only ever needed you. — Sara Zarr

I never had a connection like that to anyone, where every day you think about what you'll tell them and you wonder what they're doing, and you know they're wondering what you're doing. — Sara Zarr

It's hard to say when my interest in writing began, or how. My mother read to my sister and me every night, and we always loved playing make-believe games. I had a well-primed imagination. I didn't start thinking about writing as a serious pursuit, a career I could have, until after college. — Sara Zarr

I lived too much in my head instead of the real world. — Sara Zarr

Ethan and I are done," I said finally. "I'm sorry." "He was my first boyfriend." "I know." "The only real boyfriend I've had. I'm a senior in high school and he was my only real boyfriend." "I know." "And I won't find another one at Jones Hall. That is guaranteed." "Okay." "This is all very sad and tragic," I said. Alan unwrapped a sleeve of Smarties. "Yet, oddly, you don't seem that upset." "I know. — Sara Zarr

Only, don't mistake a new place for a new you. I've done that more than once. You asked me before why I stay here. Maybe that's why," he said, "now that I think about it. Might as well deal with myself right here. It's as good a place as any. — Sara Zarr

I tend to describe recurring themes as being part of a writer's DNA - something so deeply embedded in us that even we don't notice it until we've written three or four books. — Sara Zarr

Ethan couldn't possibly understand it, what Cameron and I meant to each other and how different it was from anything like a romance or a crush. — Sara Zarr

Because love, love never finishes. — Sara Zarr

I should have shouted and wave my hands in case the driver looked back, but mostly in life I don't protest things. I go along, or at least I make people believe I'm going along. Sometimes it's better if people think you're dumb or don't care. — Sara Zarr

Okay, then, what was he like? Just give me something to go on so that I have a shot at him!'
'A shot at him? Are you on an elk hunt? — Sara Zarr

He felt it too, the air between us, the invisible lines that something or someone had drawn to connect us. That's the way I remember it. — Sara Zarr

My books have been translated into various languages and sold in other countries, but I never have any contact with the foreign publishers and am so disconnected from that process that it seems almost imaginary. With 'How to Save a Life', I worked closely with Usborne editors and have been involved in the publicity. — Sara Zarr

The one thing that could never die or be buried was my loyalty to Cameron for everything he'd done for me and what we'd been through together, even if that loyalty was a ghost. — Sara Zarr

I do have a little bit more confidence in - or at least familiarity with - my process. For example, when it feels like it's going badly or that I'm lost, I know I'll eventually find my way because I've been through it before. But writing itself is still hard. — Sara Zarr

Sometimes trust isn't something you can just choose to do even if it makes sense. All my life the only reliable person, the one I could count on, the one who hasn't abandoned me, is me. — Sara Zarr

he's a story i want to know from page one — Sara Zarr

Life doesn't have to be only anxiety about what's gone wrong, and complaints about the world around you. — Sara Zarr

My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through. — Sara Zarr

The importance of our connection, what it meant to find each other again, the way it made what happened to us and between us not be a waste, not be for nothing. He would know, he had to know, that not saying good-bye would be the worst end of all. — Sara Zarr

Katy skipped over, her low-rise jeans threatening to fall off her skinny hips. With some girls, that was a sexy look. With Katy, it made you nervous. — Sara Zarr

My whole life has been one big broken promise. — Sara Zarr