"This was my choice, my decision. He was the closest thing I'd ever had to something, or someone, that mattered. But in the end, close didn't count. You were either in or you weren't."
-Along For the Ride
by Sarah Dessen

"Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and stuggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When somethings difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder - if not impossible - to lose."
-Along For the Ride
by Sarah Dessen

"It was terrible and awful when someone left you. You could move on, do the best you could, but like Eli had said, 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."
-Along For the Ride
by Sarah Dessen

"Whatever this attraction was, the best thing to do was just ignoring it.
Forget she'd ever noticed.
No problem."
-Footfree and Fancyloose
by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain

"He puts his arms around me. Like everyone else did. Because that's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so loveable. My throat is full and tight with tears. There are probably a hundred types of crying. Fatigue crying and despair crying and loss crying and relieved crying and narrow-escape crying. This is crying that's the sudden knowledge of love and it's fullness. And right then I learn something very simple and fundamental about love. That it is there or it is not there. That some of our biggest troubles probably come when we try to convince ourselves it it there when it isn't, or that it isn't there when it is."
-The Fortunes of Indigo Skye
by Deb Caletti

"I missed your hair," I say.
He shakes his head.
"I missed your head," I say.
"Goddamnit, In, I missed every part of you."
-The Fortunes of Indigo Skye
by Deb Caletti

"I'd always tell her, why can't I do both? Who says you have to be either smart or pretty or into girly stuff or sports? Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?"
-Along For the Ride
by Sarah Dessen

"Really, it had been stupid to expect anything anyway. A few late nights does not a habit, or a relationship, make."
-Along For the Ride
by Sarah Dessen

"If I open it now, what's coming will be instead what has come. This time, right now - it's the intstrumental before the vocals, the love before love's been admitted, the Christmas eve before the Christmas. Some things need a delicious before, and this envelope is one of them."
-The Fortunes of Indigo Skye
by Deb Caletti

"The loss doesn't go away - it just gets bigger the longer you look at it. It's the same with people who say, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn't kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"It's not human to let go of love, even when it's dead. We expected one of these monthly anniversaries to be the Final Goodbye. We figured that we'd said all our goodbyes, and give up all the tears we had to give. We'd passed the test and would get back what we'd lost. But instead, every anniversary it hurt more, and every anniversary it felt like she was further away from coming back. The idea that there wouldn't be a final goodbye - that was a hard goobye to say in itself, and, at that point, still an impossible goodbye."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"There is nowhere else I could imagine wanting to be besides here in this car, with this girl, on this road, listening to this song. If she breaks my heart, no matter what hell she puts me through, I can say it was worth it, just because of right now. Out the window is a blur and all I can really hear it this girl's hair flapping in the wind, and maybe if we drive fast enough the universe will lose track of us and forget to stick us somewhere else."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"I could already tell there were things happening deep inside me that were irreversible. Is there any scarier word than 'irreversible'? It's a hiss of a word, full of side effects and utilations. Severe tire damage - no backing up. Falling in love with Renee felt that way. I felt strange things going on inside me, and I knew that these weren't things I would recover from. These were changes that were shaping the way things were going to be, and I wouldn't find out how until later. Irreversible."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"I don't know what your type is. I don't know what your deal is. I don't even know if you have a boyfriend. I know I like you and I want to be in your life, that's it, and if you have any room for a boyfriend, I would like to be your boyfriend, and if you don't have any room, I would like to be your friend. Any room you have for me in your life is great. If you would like me to start in one room and move to another, I could do that."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"I was reading a poem by my idol, Wallace Stevens, in which he said, "The self is a cloister of remembered sounds." My first response was, Yesss! How did he know that? It's like he's reading my mind. But my second response was, I need some new sounds to remember. I've been stuck in my little isolation chamber for so long I'm spinning through the same sounds I've been hearing in my head all my life. If I go on this way, I'll get old too fast, without remembering any more sounds than I already know now. The only one who remembers any of my sounds is me. How do you turn down the volume on your personal-drama earphones and learn how to listen to other people? How do you jump off one moving train, marked Yourself, and jump onto a train moving in the opposite direction, marked Everybody Else?"
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"I have built my entire life around loving music, and I surround myself with it. I'm always racing to catch up on my next favorite song. But I never stop playing my mixes. Every fan makes them. The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with - nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"A song nobody likes is a sad thing. But a love song nobody likes is hardly a thing at all."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"Nothing conncets to the moment like music. I count on the music to bring me back - or, more precisely, to bring her forward."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"The whole world got hceated out of Renee. I got cheated less than anybody, since I got more of her than anybody. But still, I wanted more of her. I wanted to be her guy forever and ever."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"I was a wallflower who planned to stay that way, who never imagined anybody else to be. Suddenly, I got all tangled up in this girl's noisy, juicy, sparkly life. Without her, I didn't want to do anything, except keep being good at Renee."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"She was in the middle of everything, living her big, messy, epic life, and none of us who loved her will ever catch up with her."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"Falling in love with Renee was not the kind of thing you walk away from in one piece. I had no chance. She put a hitch in my git-along."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield

"Everything was changing, that was obvious. The world was so full of music, it seemed we could never run out. 'Twas bliss in that dawn to be alive, but to be young and overworked and underexposed and stuck in a nowhere town was very heaven. It was our time, the first one we had to ourselves."
-Love Is a Mix Tape
by Rob Sheffield