But down deeper, something I'd seen as solid—not perfect, but solid—was suddenly crumbling. I felt like I was falling to pieces right along with it.

About Sarah Dessen

Sarah Dessen (born June 6, 1970) is an American novelist known for her contributions to young adult fiction. Her first book, That Summer, was published in 1996, and has since published more than a dozen other novels and novellas. In 2017, Dessen won the Margaret Edwards Award for some of...

More quotations from Sarah Dessen

It was terrible and awful when someone left you. You could move on, do the best you could, but an ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last word.

—Sarah Dessen in Along for the Ride

It was always late at night, when everything and everyone else was quiet, that those voices would rise like ghosts, soft and haunting, filling your mind until sleep finally came.

—Sarah Dessen in Keeping the Moon

If June was the beginning of a hopeful summer, and July the juicy middle, August was suddenly feeling like the bitter end.

—Sarah Dessen in The Moon and More

Relationships always started with that heady, swoonish period, where the other person is like some new invention that suddenly solves all life's worst problems, like losing socks in the dryer or toasting bagels without burning the edges. At this phase, which usually lasts about six weeks max, the other person is perfect. But at six weeks and two days, the cracks begin to show; not real structural damage yet, but little things that niggle and nag. Like the way they always assume you'll pay for your own movie, just because you did once, or how they use the dashboard of their car as an imaginary keyboard at long stoplights. Once, you might have thought this was cute, or endearing. Now, it annoys you, but not enough to change anything. Come week eight, though, the strain is starting to show. This person is, in fact, human, and here's where most relationships splinter and die. Because either you can stick around and deal with these problems, or ease out gracefully, knowing that at some point in the not-too-distant future, there will emerge another perfect person, who will fix everything, at least for six weeks.

—Sarah Dessen in This Lullaby

love relationships perfection problems

Sometimes you had signs: sometimes you didn't. But I kept a close eye anyway.

—Sarah Dessen in The Truth About Forever

History

21 Aug 2015 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

But down deeper, something I'd seen as solid―not perfect, but solid―was suddenly crumbling. I felt like I was falling to pieces right along with it.