Sarah Dessen Books Quotes & Sayings

I'm incredibly flattered when people tell me that my books helped them through high school. Because of my own experience, the thought that something I wrote might help someone who felt the way I did when I was a teen ... that's huge. It awes me. — Sarah Dessen

I think having a good agent is key. I've been with mine for ten years now, and she's very honest with me. There are a lot of times I've sent her books that were not so good because I was tired of writing, or panicked about money, and she's told me flat out, "You don't want this to be your next book. Trust me." — Sarah Dessen

Whatever art is, it is no longer something primarily to be looked at. Stared at, perhaps, but not primarily looked at — Arthur Danto

I just started to put texting and phones in my books. I want my books to be read 20 years from now; I don't want them to be dated. — Sarah Dessen

You don't ever disappear. You just change. You leave. You move on. But you never disappear. Even when you think you want to. — Amy Harmon

He wasn't quite sure when he made it, somewhere between turning on the shower and stepping in, perhaps, or pouring the milk and adding the cereal, or maybe a dozen tiny decisions had added up like letters until they finally made a word, a phrase, a sentence. — Victoria Schwab

Being rich and coming from a distinguished family background doesn't guarantee happiness, Abby. In fact, it might make happiness harder to find because you have to live up to akk that expectation. — V.C. Andrews

My books are so tame! — Sarah Dessen

Everyone prefers belief to the exercise of judgement. — Seneca.

I think as a writer one of the benefits is that you can put things that you're interested in into your books. I always have put a lot of food and restaurants because I was a waitress and I love to eat. — Sarah Dessen

I don't talk about my books while I'm writing them: not even my husband knows what a novel's about until it's done. — Sarah Dessen

But I also knew that the human condition leads us to feel alive when confronted with things that we have never imagined, and even more alive when confronted with things we cannot have. — Laura Thomas

I really just love to read, period, whether it be books or magazines or the back of the cereal box. It's the one thing I can always count on to calm me down, take me away and inspire me, all at once. — Sarah Dessen

I grew up abroad, so I would love to have my child grow up the same way and experience the world. — Cris Judd

I think readers are just looking for things that maybe they recognize or can relate to in the books. — Sarah Dessen

It was a basic plot in any number of her books: girl strikes out, makes good, finds love, gets revenge. In that order. The making good and striking out part I liked. The rest would just be bonus. — Sarah Dessen

The message of the cross will always be foolishness to some, a stumbling block to others. But if our attention is on the market reaction, we move away from the power of the gospel. This fearfulness to talk about the blood of Christ is an overreaction. Worse than that, it borders on heresy, distorting and deflating the power of the Good News. — Jim Cymbala

The best game ever played was in Monday 3/21/2016, 2 games were played for 40 minutes class sport and in both I win and I and my friend we were going on the 3 game, but unfortunately we didn't finished it. But from here it can be see that I'm the winner! — Deyth Banger

I've changed in my sympathies since I've become a mother myself. In high school I went through a period where I was close with my mom and had to break with her in order to find myself and come back. Since that was my experience, that's often what happens in my books. — Sarah Dessen

I think my biggest problem, though, at least in drafts, is not repeating myself. After eight books I get worried that a character or piece of dialog might be too much like something I've already done. So it's a challenge to keep it fresh. — Sarah Dessen

I'm famously secretive about my work. Nobody reads my books till they're finished. — Sarah Dessen

I have SO many books I didn't sell. Some my agent rejected outright, others made it all the way to my editor to be turned away. Not everything is a winner, which is tough when you've devoted eight or nine months of your life to something. — Sarah Dessen

When I'm working on something and I get to the point where I feel it getting interesting, that's my reward. — Hans-Peter Lindstrom

In high school, I was lucky enough to have a big group of girlfriends that have really inspired a lot of the stories in my books. I'm still close with my friends from that time, so it's never very hard to put myself back into that place, that voice. — Sarah Dessen

One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so, and that religion is our own sweet invention. — Flannery O'Connor

My dad is a retired Shakespeare professor, my mother a retired classicist. Suffice to say I grew up in a house full of books, where reading was encouraged if not required. — Sarah Dessen

For this is the journey that men and women make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much else what they find. — James A. Michener

I've never envied the person who had to put my books together in one script. — Sarah Dessen

I think part of the problem sometimes is that there's so much happening in my books, to whittle it down into a single script is hard. — Sarah Dessen