Sarah Dessen Quotes

Man, you don't know how I felt that afternoon when I heard that voice and it was my own voice.

The next voice you hear will undoubtedly be your own.

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

I have always written only for myself - to clarify things, to clarify things with myself, to understand in an inner way what is actually happening.

In my early 30s, I started to realise I was avoiding something on a personal level, but also as a writer. I was in denial about who I was, and was trying to be someone who I was not.

What a liberation to realize that the 'voice in my head' is not who I am. 'Who am I, then?' The one who sees that.

In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see, each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep, serious way.

Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

Whatever you perceive, you always make a story with yourself as the main character, and that dictates your life. Then when you read 'The Four Agreements', you hear another voice beneath the story, the voice that comes from your integrity, your spirit.

I lived my life one way for 35 years, for me. And then the focus came in on what I really was.

It is the individual who knows how little they know about themselves who stands the most reasonable chance of finding out something about themselves before they die.

We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouth are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half: neither having achieved being nor actors.

Sometimes I need to be a stranger to myself. Only then my soul can show me not what I want, but what I need to see.

One of the other reasons for writing this book [My Beloved World] was to hold on to the person you first met. More of the world knows about me now and follows me in a way that never happened before. I didn't want me, the inside of me, to change. Because I liked Sonia, the Sonia who has been. So another reason for writing the book was to hold on to that - whatever the best in Sonia was, to try to capture it.

How can you spend hours every day trying in small ways to figure out who you are, then have a near-stranger give you a sentence of yourself that says it better than you ever could?

I'm just getting to know myself. I'm no wherwhere near to being concise about it yet. I can't define myself. Wait a minute - I'm angry, I'm funny and I'm trying.

Try to find your deepest issue in every confusion, and abide by that.

It's important that a person doesn't lose track of himself.

I think 'Lost Boy' is more of a metaphor for oneself. When I listen to that song, I don't picture someone else. I kind of wrote it from a very honest place.

I think I spent a lot of my mid-twenties thinking it was a problem of my onstage persona. But, actually, it was my actual personality. I was still working out what kind of person I was.

You are what you've been looking for. The answer is always in you alone. There is nothing in the external world. For the external world is an emanation of your own mind, your own thinking and your own imagination. You created this world.

I found after seventy years that I was not a lunatic but a moron.... I should have been able to do better.

There is nothing more entertaining than to have a frank talk with yourself. Few do it-frankly. Educating yourself is getting acquainted with yourself.

Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind.

You can spend time self-identifying and figuring out what you are on that, but at some point, you just want to be who you are and not walk around telling people.