There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn't sure I had it in me to keep looking back.

—Sarah Dessen in Just Listen

history regret the past

About Sarah Dessen

Portrait of 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

If he was here, I don't even know what might have happened between us. We were only together for a summer, you know? Maybe he would have turned out to be a major jerk. I'll never know. But when it gets like this, and I'm miserable, all I can think is that he might have made everything okay. That he was the only one who understood. Ever.

—Sarah Dessen in Someone Like You

I was used to being invisible. People rarely saw me, and if they did, they never looked close. I wasn't shiny and charming like my brother, stunning and graceful like my mother, or smart and dynamic like my friends. That's the thing, though. You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.

—Sarah Dessen in Saint Anything

fear invisibility

But as was so often the case, it was the one person missing who you thought about more than the ones who were right in front of you.

—Sarah Dessen in The Moon & More

I've always known who I am. I might not work perfectly, or be like them, but that's okay. I know I work in my own way.

—Sarah Dessen in Keeping the Moon

Sometimes things don't turn out the way you want them to. Sometimes the people you choose to believe are wrong.

—Sarah Dessen in That Summer

people uncertainty

More quotations tagged with “the past”

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

now live the future the past

It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

—Lisa Schroeder in Far from You

identity change self the past

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

future past prediction the future the past

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.

—William Ralph Inge

I don't think of the past. The only thing that matters is the everlasting present.

—W. Somerset Maugham

History

23 Oct 2015 Added