Sarah Dessen on Love

"The truth was I knew, after all those flat January days, that I deserved better. I deserved I love yous and kiwi fruits and warriors coming to my door, besotted with love. I deserved pictures of my face in a thousand expressions, and the warmth of a baby's kick beneath my hand. I deserved to grow, and to change, to become all the girls I could be over the course of my life, each one better than the last."

"Look," I said, "We knew Jason and Becky would be back, the break would end. This isn't a surprise, it's what's supposed to happen. It's what we wanted. Right?""Is it?" he asked. "Is it what you want?"Whether he intended it to be or not, this was the final question, the last Truth. If I said what I really thought, I was opening myself up for a hurt bigger than I could even imagine. I didn't have it in me. We changed and altered so many rules, but it was this one, the only one when we'd started, that I would break."Yes," I said."

"You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It's not overrated. There's a reason for all those songs."

"He wasn't the type for displays of affection, either verbal or not. He was disgusted by couples that made out in the hallways between classes, and got annoyed at even the slightest sappy moments in movies. But I knew he cared about me: he just conveyed it more subtly, as concise with expressing this emotion as he was with everything else. It was in the way he'd put his hand on the small of my back, for instance, or how he'd smile at me when I said something that surprised him. Once I might have wanted more, but I'd come around to his way of thinking in the time we'd been together. And we were together, all the time. So he didn't have to prove how he felt about me. Like so much else, I should just know."

"No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot."

"There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment."

"I mean, it's not surprising, really. Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It's, like, part of you for good."

"You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It's always been yes when it comes to you."

"You want to take me to a movie?" I asked. "Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off."

"He was not my boyfriend. On the other hand, he wasn't just a friend either. Instead, our relationship was elastic, stretching between those two extremes depending on who else was around, how much either of us had to drink, and other varying factors. This was exactly what I wanted, as commitments had never really been my thing. And it wasn't like it was hard, either. The only trick was never giving more than you were willing to lose."

"The fate of your heart is your choice and no one else gets a vote"

"Love is needing someone. Love is putting up with someone's bad qualities because they somehow complete you."

"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."

"Wherever you will go, I will let you down, But this lullaby goes on."

"You know, when it works, love is amazing. It's not overrated."

"Love is so unpredictable. That's what makes it so great."

"You can't just turn your heart off like a faucet; you have to go to the source and dry it out, drop by drop."

"When you can't save yourself or your heart, it helps to be able to save face."

"The worst thing you can do if you miss or need someone is let them know it."

"Are those the only options? Nothing or forever?"

"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."