Just One Summer Quotes & Sayings

Lincoln," Sam had asked him on one of those nights, the summer before their senior year, "do you think we'll get married some day?"
"I hope so," he'd whispered. He didn't usually think about it like that, like "married." He thought about how he never wanted to be without her. About how happy she made him and how he wanted to go on being that happy for the rest of his life. If a wedding could promise him that, he definitely wanted to get married.
"Wouldn't it be romantic," she said, "to marry your high school sweetheart? When people ask us how we met I'll say, 'We met in high school. I saw him, and I just knew.' And they'll say, 'Didn't you
ever wonder what it would be like to be with someone else? — Rainbow Rowell

I will love you like the desert burns along the sun when they are together,
and when you will be gone,
just like every one else,
I will cry for you like the snow that melts at the first hint of summer ...
and hoping that you'll be back
I will miss you like the clouds lose themselves when it rains ... — Sanhita Baruah

Two Seasons, it is said, exist-
The Summer of the Just,
And this of Ours, diversified
With Prospect, and with Frost-
May not our Second with its First
So infinite compare
That We but recollect the one
The other to prefer? — Emily Dickinson

Something told him that something was coming to an end. Not the world, exactly. Just the summer. There would be other summers, but there would never be one like this. Ever again. — Neil Gaiman

Chapter 1 JEREMIAH WAS BLACK. HE COULD FEEL IT. THE WAY THE sun pressed down hard and hot on his skin in the summer. Sometimes it felt like he sweated black beads of oil. He felt warm inside his skin, protected. And in Fort Greene, Brooklyn - where everyone seemed to be some shade of black-he felt good walking through the neighborhood. But one step outside. Just one step and somehow the weight of his skin seemed to change. It got heavier. Light-skinned — Jacqueline Woodson

Sometimes you're just the sweetest thing. Like Christmas, summer vacation, and a brand-new puppy rolled into one. — Haruki Murakami

The elk that you glimpse in the summer, those at the forest edge, are survivors of winter, only the strongest. You see one just before dusk that summer, standing at the perimeter of the meadow so it can step back to the forest and vanish. You can't help imagining the still, frozen nights behind it, so cold that the slightest motion is monumental. I have found their bodies, half drifted over in snow, no sign of animal attack or injury. Just toppled over one night with ice working into their lungs. You wouldn't want to stand outside for more than a few minutes in that kind of weather. If you lived through only one of those winters the way this elk has, you would write books about it. You would become a shaman. You would be forever changed. That elk from the winter stands there on the summer evening, watching from beside the forest. It keeps its story to itself. — Craig Childs

I thought, I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There's no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it's sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame. That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves - it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute. I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin. — Osamu Dazai

Sadness pulses out of us as we walk. I almost expect the trees to lower their branches when we pass, the stars to hand down some light. I breathe in the horsy scent of eucalyptus, the thick sugary pine, aware of each breath I take, how each one keeps me in the world a few seconds longer. I taste the sweetness of the summer air on my tongue and want to just gulp and gulp and gulp it into my body
this living, breathing, heart-beating body of mine. — Jandy Nelson

George always said the first summer of the Rising was possibly the best example of human nobility that history had to offer, because for just a few months, before the accusations started flying and the fingers started pointing, we really were one people, united against one enemy. And we fought. We fought for the right to live, and in the end, we won. Sort of, anyway. — Mira Grant

But that day it was raining, and since they couldn't very well sit on the rooftop in the rain to watch the flotilla parade, they stayed in the little room that led to the roof. It had just one tiny window through which the gray light of day filtered in. They sat on the floor, and Lorenzo's senses were aroused by the sound of the rain falling outside, the musky smell of his own body, and the fragrant scent of Caterina's hair. A single blonde strand wound down her slim neck.

They kissed, taking off their rain-washed summer clothes so that their bodies pressed, naked, against one another. Long, delicate lovemaking. Caresses, kisses, shivers, and sighs of delight.

Lorenzo would have gladly spend the rest of his life preserved in that single moment, as if in amber, abandoning reality to live in the memory of that one single day. — Riccardo Bruni

It was her last breakfast with Bapi, her last morning in Greece. In her frenetic bliss that kept her up till dawn, she'd scripted a whole conversation in Greek for her and Bapi to have as their grand finale of the summer. Now she looked at him contentedly munching on his Rice Krispies, waiting for the right juncture for launchtime.

He looked up at her briefly and smiled, and she realized something important. This was how they both liked it. Though most people felt bonded by conversation, Lena and Bapi were two of a kind who didn't. They bonded by the routine of just eating cereal together.

She promptly forgot her script and went back to her cereal.

At one point, when she was down to just milk, Bapi reached over and put his hand on hers. 'You're my girl,' he said.

And Lena knew she was. — Ann Brashares

For the first time in his life, he was a hot mess over a guy. Then again, Sloane Brodie wasn't just any guy. He was rolling thunder and a sweet summer breeze. Passionate, complex, and intense. Mysterious and brooding. He made Dex laugh, beg, and want to scream. With one look he could crush Dex's heart, with one whisper have him on his knees. — Charlie Cochet

...., who have miraculously materialised, at that very moment. Just like a thick bank of clouds, in the middle of summer, during one's lunch hour. — Gary Edward Gedall

One thing I did learn from those classes is that the world is not, in any way, what people expected thirty years ago. The zombies are here, and they're not going away, but they're not the story. They were, for one hot, horrible summer at the beginning of the century, but now they're just another piece of the way things work. They did their part: They changed everything. — Mira Grant

If everybody in the world despises you and hates you, sees your features as ugly and simian, makes jokes about your ways of talking, calls you stupid and beneath contempt; if you have no history, no heroes, and no future where a hero might lead, then you might begin to hate yourself.... And then one hot summer's night you just erupt and go burning and shooting and nobody seems to know why. — Walter Mosley

The winter was not really winter at all, and therein may lie Key West's greatest charm. If one does not have to brood upon the coming of winter and the shortening of the days and the fading of the light, then perhaps one does not have to brood upon the coming of death. When the season is gentle and untreatening and seems to renew itself daily, we come to believe that spring and the long days of summer may be eternal after all. When we see the light trapped high in the sky on a summer evening, is it possible we are looking through an aperture at our future rather than at a seasonal phenomenon? Is it possible that the big party is just beginning? — James Lee Burke

I think I was just bored one summer afternoon, and I decided to post a little video of me singing and playing guitar out of tune. — Shawn Mendes

I stared at him. Did he really just say that? Did he remember? The way he looked back at me, one eyebrow raised, I knew he did. And this time, I was the one to look away. Because I remembered. I remembered everything. — Jenny Han

With the Wit, one is aware of all the life that surrounds one. It was not just the warmth of the mare nearby that I sensed. I knew the scintillant forms of the myriad insects that populated the grasses, and felt even the shadowy life force of the great oak that lifted its limbs between the moon and me. Just up the hillside, a rabbit crouched motionless in the summer grasses. I felt its indistinct presence, not as a piece of life located in a certain place, but as one sometimes hears a single voice's note within a market's roar. But above all, I felt a physical kinship with all that lived in the world. I had a right to be here. I was as much a part of this summer night as the insects or the water purling past my feet. I think that old magic draws much of its strength from that acknowledgment: that we are a part of that world, no more, but certainly no less than the rabbit."
p. 129 — Robin Hobb

No one needs Independence. We all just need tea and air conditioners. — Michelle Franklin

The idea of fairyland fascinates me because it's one of those things, like mermaids and dragons, that doesn't really exist, but everyone knows about it anyway. Fairyland lies only in the eye of the beholder who is usually a fabricator of fantasy. So what good is it, this enchanted, fickle land which in some tales bodes little good to humans and, in others, is the land of peace and perpetual summer where everyone longs to be? Perhaps it's just a glimpse of our deepest wishes and greatest fears, the farthest boundaries of our imaginations. We go there because we can; we come back because we must. What we see there becomes our tales. — Patricia A. McKillip

Game by game is how I judge myself. At the end of the season, yeah, I do look back and think about how many games I've been available for, how many goals I've scored, how I've contributed. But that's what the summer's for. For now, you just look to the next one. — Michael Owen

You're going to be a famous artist." His voice is deep velvet - soothing and sure. "You'll live in one of those artsy, upscale apartments in Paris with your rich husband. Oh, who just happens to be a world-renowned exterminator. How's that for a twist of fate? You won't even have to catch your own bugs anymore. That'll give you more time to spend with your five brilliant kids. And I'll come visit every summer. Show up on the doorstep with a bottle of Texas BBQ sauce and a French baguette. I'll be weird Uncle Jeb. — A.G. Howard

I want a private life, I truly do. I'm not just pretending to want one like lots of celebrities. — Donna Summer

On that golden summer day, the young woman had just finished her morning run. She had sprinted the last half mile, then stopped abruptly to catch her breath. She was bent at the waist, hands on her knees, eyes on the ground, her mind a world away, perhaps in Barcelona or Tuscany or Rome, exulting in the enchanting sights she would soon see, the splendid life she would have.

It was then that the train hit her.

Unaware, unthinking, oblivious to everything but the beguiling visions in her head, she had ended her run on the railroad tracks that wound through the center of her small Oregon town, one moment in the fullest expectancy of her glorious youth, adrenaline and endorphins coursing through her body, sugarplum visions dancing in her head, the next moment gone, the transition instantaneous, irrevocable, complete.

If I'd had to die young, hers is the death I would have chosen. — Lionel Fisher

I'd stayed away for two years. I had to. I knew I shouldn't even be at the summer house, because being there, being near her, I would just want what I couldn't have. It was dangerous. She was the one person I didn't trust myself around. The day she showed up with Jere, I called my friend Danny to see if I could crash on his couch for a while, and he'd said yes. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't leave. — Jenny Han

I talked to Mr. Gotha, the sheriff," Carlton told his friends Amos and Albert. "He told me it is just a rumor, but that there is element of truth in every rumor." "Really? What are we going to do now?" asked Albert. "I am scared, really scared," said Amos. "Everybody is scared to death and no one is doing anything to protect us," said Albert. "I think we should do something, since no one else is going to," said Carlton "And what can you do, you coward? If anybody is to do something, it certainly would not be you, Carlton. Remember, you are a — Summer Bill

Most of you will have heard the maxim "correlation does not imply causation." Just because two variables have a statistical relationship with each other does not mean that one is responsible for the other. For instance, ice cream sales and forest fires are correlated because both occur more often in the summer heat. But there is no causation; you don't light a patch of the Montana brush on fire when you buy a pint of Haagan-Dazs. — Nate Silver

New York is strange in the summer. Life goes on as usual but it's not, it's like everyone is just pretending, as if everyone has been cast as the star in a movie about their life, so they're one step removed from it. And then in September it all gets normal again. — Peter Cameron

I come from down south, where vegetation does not know its place. Honeysuckle can work through cracks in your walls and strangle you while you sleep. Kudzu can completely shroud a house and a car parked in the yard in one growing season. Wisteria can lift a building off its foundation, and certain terrifying mints spread so rapidly that just the thought of them on a summer night can make your hair stand on end. — Bailey White

Success is always an easier motivator, because you want more of it. But I've also been motivated by failure. Had I medaled in London, I don't think I would be one of the few that have gone to a Summer and Winter. I would have been content with that medal. Instead, I used that failure to go to the Winter Olympics. I always tell people that failure can be one of your biggest motivators if you just have an attitude adjustment about it. — Lolo Jones

Any pitcher who might throw at me should know I'm not giving up my day job or trying to get anyone else's job. I just can't think of anything cooler than being one of the boys of summer! — Garth Brooks

And then one student said that happiness is what happens when you go to bed on the hottest night of the summer, a night so hot you can't even wear a tee-shirt and you sleep on top of the sheets instead of under them, although try to sleep is probably more accurate. And then at some point late, late, late at night, say just a bit before dawn, the heat finally breaks and the night turns into cool and when you briefly wake up, you notice that you're almost chilly, and in your groggy, half-consciousness, you reach over and pull the sheet around you and just that flimsy sheet makes it warm enough and you drift back off into a deep sleep. And it's that reaching, that gesture, that reflex we have to pull what's warm - whether it's something or someone - toward us, that feeling we get when we do that, that feeling of being safe in the world and ready for sleep, that's happiness. — Paul Schmidtberger

Do you hear the snow against the windowpanes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.' And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about - whenever the wind blows ... — Lewis Carroll

It was one of those years when there was no summer. There was no winter either. It was just November all year that year. — Betty K. Erwin

There's always one sure way of finding out that you're a misfit. When you're eleven years old, and your friends are telling you that they just sneaked into the theater to watch 'Twilight' and that it was "sooooo emotional and sooooo terrifying and soooooo romantic!" - but you've been spending the summer watching 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'Don't Look Now' and knowing the lines to all the Alfred Hitchcock films by heart - that's the moment you realize that you're a misfit. — Rebecca McNutt

A summer breeze can be very refreshing; but if we try to put it in a tin can so we can have it entirely to ourselves, the breeze will die. Our beloved is the same. He is like a breeze, a cloud, a flower. If you imprison him in a tin can, he will die. Yet many people do just that. They rob their loved one of his liberty, until he can no longer be himself. They live to satisfy themselves and use their loved one to help them fulfill that. That is not loving; it is destroying. — Nhat Hanh

Just as I wonder
whether it's going to die,
the orchid blossoms
and I can't explain why it
moves my heart, why such pleasure
comes from one small bud
on a long spindly stem, one
blood red gold flower
opening at mid-summer,
tiny, perfect in its hour. — Sam Hamill

Oh, girl! He's got a big one," the fortune teller exclaimed, her dark eyes briefly flickering up to Violet's face before returning back to the cards spread out in front of her. She paused for a moment as she studied them, her pointer finger tapping against her jaw. Finally, she added, "Just like a summer sausage, and I'm not talking about the snack-sized ones. And it's attached to a body that could put Dwayne Johnson to shame. What women could resist a package like that? I'd say the future is definitely going to be bright ... at least for you. — Rose Wynters

I went to see a children's matinee at the movie theatre one summer, but at some point they had changed to the grown up movie in the late afternoon, and I ended up seeing this movie called 'The Bad Seed.' It just terrified me. — Robert Englund

I rode all around Hollywood listening to Donna Summer, looking out the window - all by myself - just going, 'I'm number one!' It's a pretty extraordinary feeling. — Jimmy Webb

Don't you ever feel like, what if the world really IS messed up? What if we COULD Do it all over again from scratch? No more war. Nobody homeless. No more summer reading homework.
'm listening.
Annabeth: I mean, the West represents a lot of the best things mankind ever did
that's why the fire is still burning. That's why OlympusIs still around. But sometimes you just see the bad stuff, you know? And you start thinking the way Luke does: 'If I could tear this all down, i would do it better.'. Don't you ever feel that way? Like YOU could do a better job I'd you ran the world?
Percy:Um ... no. Me running the world would be kind of a nightmare.
Annabeth: then you're lucky. Hubris isn't your fatal flaw.
Percy: what is?
Annabeth: I don't know, Percy, but every hero has one. If you don't find it and learn to control it ... well, they don't call it 'fatal' for nothing.
Percy(thinking to himself): I thought about that. It didn't exactly cheer me up. — Rick Riordan

I had one job that was kind of cop-like. One summer I did security at a miniature golf course. Just standing out in the sun all day, Hey, hey, excuse me sir. Get your putter out of the whale's ass. Come on, this is a place of miniature business. This is not a playground even though it looks like a playground. — Dane Cook

By the end of the summer, we were in a bit of a panic, and a wise CEO from a healthcare company gave me advice I will never forget. "just start," he said. "Don't wait for perfection. Just start and let the work teach you. No one expects you to get it right the very beginning, and you'll learn more from your mistakes than your early successes anyway. So stop worrying so much and just look at your best bets and go. — Jacqueline Novogratz

I pray the gods will give me some reliefAnd end this weary job. One long full yearI've been lying here, on this rooftop,The palace of the sons of Atreus,Resting on my arms, just like a dog.I've come to know the night sky, every star,The powers we see glittering in the sky,Bringing winter and summer to us all,As the constellations rise and sink. — Aeschylus

I don't like big weddings." Her panic is clear. "All those people make me nervous. I'll mess up the vows and say something inappropriate."
"It doesn't have to be big. It can be just the two of us if you want. We can wait until next summer - or the one after if a year isn't long enough. We can get married up here by a justice of the peace on the end of the dock at sunset. A damn Rastafarian can perform the ceremony if that's what you want. I don't care about the wedding part. All I want to be is connected to you in the most significant way possible. I want you as my wife. — Helena Hunting

One of the things I love about summer is that you can wear a bikini top and put something over it and it kind of just always looks a little beach-ready, which I think is very fun. — Debby Ryan

I am addicted to cereal. I am one of those people who just loves their cereal morning, noon and night. Kellogg's message is what I tell my kids every single day, which is: You've gotta start off your day right with a good, healthy breakfast to give yourself the potential for greatness. — Summer Sanders

Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of National Geographics, is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one goes back to one's Michener. — Wilfrid Sheed

Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, "but I was under the impression that you weren't looking for anything more than a short-term arrangement either, Miss Free Spirit."
She flushed. "I wasn't the one who ran for the door that night. I was doing just fine with the summer-fling thing."
"I did not run for the door. I left in a hurry, but I did not run."
"Details."
"Important details. And I'd like to remind you that I showed at your gallery the next morning," he said. "It's not like I didn't call. And how the hell do you think I felt when you told me that the sex had been therapeutic? You made it sound like a good massage or a tonic, damn it."
She bit her lip. "Well, it was in a way."
"Great. Well, do me a favor. The next time you want physical therapy, call a masseuse or a chiropractor. Or buy a vibrator. — Jayne Ann Krentz

Seconds ebb and wane. She's not afraid of her voice anymore, but she's not entirely sure she trusts it. She's seen the damage caused with a single word. Right now, each one is a weapon, a conduit of war, and she won't just throw them out there all willy-nilly. — Laura Kreitzer

circle back, you're nearly through.
The next one, then just one more clue.
Summer's coming, dark and drear,
Soon those tourists will appear.

In the word hoard you will find
Books with numbers on the spines.
A 2 a 9 a 2 again-
Not too easy for Athena's friend. — Megan Frazer Blakemore

Takashi had no choice, and he'd always known it. This was one reason he'd tried
so hard not to care about anyone, one reason why he'd known immediately just how dangerous Summer Hawthorne could be. Because now she was the one he couldn't sacrifice, couldn't walk away from, no matter how high the stakes. He could die for what he believed in. He just couldn't let her die as well. — Anne Stuart

If heaven existed, she'd just found it. His earthy scent. His stabilizing energy. Nothing smelled better, not even fresh bread from the oven, or a puppy or lilacs in the summer. He filled every crevice in her heart, gluing the broken pieces back together, one breath at a time. — Lyz Kelley

[George] Foster lacks the name recognition outside of Cincinnati that other members of the Big Red machine maintain, but that doesn't diminish his contributions to the club - he followed his MVP campaign with three more seasons of 20-plus home runs and 90-plus RBIs, never mind the fact he batted .326 during three trips to the World Series. And just like Rose and Morgan and Bench during their MVP seasons, Foster can say, if only for that one summer, he was the best in the game. — Tucker Elliot

When I got to San Francisco that afternoon, it was one of those days that arrives at the end of summer just as the last tourists are leaving complaining about the cold and fog. — Michael Nava

Winter Liar by Liam Doyle the Incubus
What come once here will never come again,
no matter monument nor memory;
all sunwarmed green succumbs to winter's wind.
And you, my love, were also my best friend,
and had your life to live. The tragedy
was not just my youth's recklessness, although
I trusted much to impulse, whim, freedom,
a destiny excluding doom. Frankly,
youth can be our insanity. But now I'm cured
of that fever, although the price was high;
and chilly April wind can only sigh
at my regrets, yet sun will brighten wind so,
one knows that soon green stirs, and wild bees hum.
And summer once more will make winter liar,
but I won't warm. You're all I'll ever desire. — Juliet Dark

And just because I own a Harley, have a few tattoos and one piercing, doesn't mean I'm a 'bad boy'," he said, his eyes ablaze with conviction. "So if you figured you might go slumming this summer in an effort to try something new and reinvent yourself, I'm not your guy. — Monica Alexander

It was one of those great spring days, it was Sunday, and you knew summer would be coming soon. And I remember that morning Dorrie and I had gone for a walk in the park and come back to the apartment. We were just sort of sitting around and I put on a record of Louie Armstrong, which was music I grew up with, and it was very, very pretty, and I happened to glance over and I saw Dorrie sitting there. And I remember thinking to myself how terrific she was and how much I loved her. And I don't know, I guess it was a combination of everything, the sound of the music, and the breeze, and how beautiful Dorrie looked to me and for one brief moment everything just seemed to come together perfectly and I felt happy, almost indestructible in a way. — Woody Allen

Returning the Pencil to Its Tray Everything is fine - the first bits of sun are on the yellow flowers behind the low wall, people in cars are on their way to work, and I will never have to write again. Just looking around will suffice from here on in. Who said I had to always play the secretary of the interior? And I am getting good at being blank, staring at all the zeroes in the air. It must have been all the time spent in the kayak this summer that brought this out, the yellow one which went nicely with the pale blue life jacket - the sudden, tippy buoyancy of the launch, then the exertion, striking into the wind against the short waves, but the best was drifting back, the paddle resting athwart the craft, and me mindless in the middle of time. Not even that dark cormorant perched on the No Wake sign, his narrow head raised as if he were looking over something, not even that inquisitive little fellow could bring me to write another word. — Billy Collins

Before I opened my computer in the parking lot today, I relived one of my favorite memories. It's the one with Woody and me sitting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum after it's closed. We're watching people parade out of the museum in summer shorts and sandals. The trees to the south are planted in parallel lines. The water in the fountain shoots up with a mist that almost reaches the steps we sit on. We look at silver-haired ladies in red-and-white-print dresses. We separate the mice from the men, the tourists from the New Yorkers, the Upper East Siders from the West Siders. The hot-pretzel vendor sells us a wad of dough in knots with clumps of salt stuck on top. We make our usual remarks about the crazies and wonder what it would be like to live in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Met. We laugh and say the same things we always say. We hold hands and keep sitting, just sitting, as the sun beings to set. It's a perfect afternoon. — Diane Keaton

Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives - trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there'll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he'll look up from what he's doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there'll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he'll smile then too because he'll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man's mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone. — Rod Serling

We had a bad summer here, my friend. Local folks keep it as quiet as they can - even the newspaper doesn't play it up - but there was some nasty work. Murders. Half a dozen at least. Kids. Found one down in the Barrens just recently. Patrick Hockstetter, his name was. All decayed. — Stephen King

One summer I was homeless in L.A., when I was about fifteen, and I used to go to the library to get books. I would have books in abandoned cars, in the seats, cubby holes on the L.A. River, just to have books wherever I could keep them, I just loved to have books. And that really helped me. I didn't realize it was going to be my destiny; I didn't know I was going to be a writer. — Luis J. Rodriguez

I really liked it." She covers her mouth in horror.
"If I like sex, do you think it means I can't be a feminist?"
"No." I shake my head. "Because being a feminist
I think it means being in charge of your sexuality. You decide who you want to have sex with. It means not trading your sexuality for ... other things."
"Like marrying some gross guy who you're not in love with just so you can have a nice house with a picket fence."
"Or marrying a rich old geezer. Or a guy who expects you to cook him dinner every night and take care of the children," I say, thinking of Samantha.
"Or a guy who makes you have sex with him whenever he wants, even if you don't," Miranda concludes.
We look at each other in triumph, as if we've finally solved one of the world's great problems. — Candace Bushnell

I acted in high school and studied at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford for one summer. I minored in theater, and I was always acting growing up, but really, I was just more interested in the comedy of it all. — T. J. Miller

Pick the tomato warm from the garden. Sit right there in a sunny patch if you've got one. Brush off any dirt and bugs, but don't make yourself crazy. Sprinkle with a little salt. And don't you add one other thing, because there's just something about a tomato being a tomato. Eat it like an apple. Let the juices run down your chin, and then wipe 'em away with your shirtsleeve. You heard me. The perfect summer tomato is worth half a shirt. And that's the truth. — Kat Yeh

Where's your dad now?" Thomas asked.
"He's gone."
The word gone echoed all over the reservation. The reservation was gone itself, just a shell of its former self, just a fragment of the whole. But the reservation still possessed the power and rage, magic and loss, joys and jealousy. The reservation tugged at the lives of its Indians, stole from them in the middle of the night, watched impassively as the horses and salmon disappeared. But the reservation forgave, too. Sam Bone vanished between foot falls on the way to the Trading Post one summer day and reappeared years later to finish his walk. Thomas, Chess, and Checkers heard the word gone shake the foundation of the house. — Sherman Alexie

We'd walk home together in the foggy summer night and I'd tell her about sex; the good stuff, like how it could be warm and exciting
it took you away
and the not-so-good things, like how once you showed someone that part of yourself, you had to trust them one thousand percent and anything could happen. Someone you thought you knew could change and suddenly not want you, suddenly decide you made a better story than a girlfriend. Or how sometimes you might think you wanted to do it and then halfway through or afterward realize no, you just wanted the company, really; you wanted someone to choose you, and the sex part itself was like a trade-off, something you felt like you had to give to get the other part. I'd tell her that and help her decide. I'd be a friend. — Sara Zarr

But one thing I've learned is that the minute I start fixating on what I don't have - time, money, a child I can send to camp for the summer, central air conditioning - I just feel that much hotter and put-upon, and those bad feelings seem to attract extra obstructions to my day. — Marie Myung-Ok Lee

No alien land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but one, no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides me; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of it surfbeat is in my ear; I can see its garland crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud wrack; I can feel the woodland solitudes, I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.
-MARK TWAIN in an 1889 Dinner Speech at Delmonico's in New York to honor two baseball teams that had just returned from touring the Pacific, including Honolulu. — John Richard Stephens

When I was a young girl, I lost a lot of weight over one summer - involuntarily - and was just really depressed and sad. There was nothing I could do to gain weight. I would look in the mirror and call myself disgusting every day. — Tyra Banks

I remember when I was twenty-five," he said. "No client comes to you when you're twenty-five. It's like when you are looking for a doctor. You don't want the new one that just graduated. You don't want the very old one, the one shaking, the one twenty years past his prime. You want the seasoned one who has done it so many times he can do it in his sleep though. Same thing with attorneys. — Daniel Amory

I was born in the summer of 1970, the last of five boys stretched over eight years. My parents were a struggling young couple who had been married one afternoon under a shade tree by a preacher without a church. No guests or fancy dress, just the two of them, lost in love, and the preacher taking a break from working on a house. — Charles M. Blow

Someone told me at the beginning of that summer that I would come face-to-face with death because of a Romeo and Juliet romance, I would never have believed it. But it wasn't like that summer went at all like I had planned in the first place. The Columbia recruiter sat across from me, her dark bushy eyebrows rising as high as they could go while she stared down at my application. "So, Alex, I see that you don't have any extracurricular activities." I shrugged. I was sitting in one of those uncomfortable orange plastic chairs in the guidance counselor's office, wishing I could just disappear. I was the first student in all of Winnebago High School's history to have a recruiter from an Ivy League school visit. By the way she looked at our tiny school with its ancient, chipped walls and rusted lockers, I could see why nobody had wanted to visit in the past. — Magan Vernon

If he was a ghost in the life he remembered, Jeff thought, he was also a ghost in his present life, just the same way. Except, in all the fourteen years, just a couple of times. With Melody that first summer he had felt alive. On the beach on the island. And when he played the guitar. Most of the time, he thought, he practiced not being anybody. If you weren't anybody then nobody could - what? Hurt you or leave you behind? Make you unhappy? But then they couldn't make you happy either, could they? If you played it safe, then you kept safe. Jeff figured he was pretty good at keeping safe - he didn't even look in mirrors because he didn't want to see Melody's eyes. But one result of that was that Jeff didn't know anything about himself. And he thought, sitting in the little boat, alone on the creek, alone with the creek and the sky and the marshes, that he might want to know more. — Cynthia Voigt

Marriages are always moving from one season to another. Sometimes we find ourselves in winter
discouraged, detached, and dissatisfied; other times we experience springtime, with its openness, hope, and anticipation. On still other occasions we bask in the warmth of summer
comfortable, relaxed, enjoying life. And then comes fall with its uncertainty, negligence, and apprehension. The cycle repeats itself many times throughout the life of a marriage, just as the seasons repeat themselves in nature. — Gary Chapman

I thought to myself then that it didn't matter where I ended up; I'd always be living that summer in that town, wishing that I;d done things differently, tormented by the fact that I hadn't. I'd never go far enough to be able to escape it. Maybe you're happy about that. OR maybe you're not. Maybe you're carrying your own regrets, and you understand how easy it is to let your life get away from you. I wish I could be the hero of this story, but I'm not. I'm just the one to tell it, at least my part in it- the story of Katie Mackey and the people who failed her. It's an old one, this tale of selfish desires and the lament that follows, as ancient as the story of Adam and Eve turned away forever from paradise. — Lee Martin

S death one of those adventures from which I can't emerge as myself? The sister whose hand I am clutching in the picture is dead. I wonder every day whether she still exists ... A person whom one has loved seems altogether too significant a thing to simply vanish altogether from the world. A person whom one loves is a world, just as one knows oneself to be a world. How can worlds like these simply cease altogether? But if my sister does exist, then what is she, and what makes that thing that she now is identical with the beautiful girl laughing at her little sister on that forgotten day? Can she remember that summer's day while I cannot? — Rebecca Goldstein

He's probably one of those "love the one you're with" guys
meaning he automatically goes after whatever woman happens to be around when he's feeling horny."
"Just another reason why I'll never get married," I say, getting out of the car.
"Oh, Carrie." He sighs. "I feel sorry for you, then. I worry that you'll never find true love. — Candace Bushnell

Nothing Twice Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice. Even if there is no one dumber, if you're the planet's biggest dunce, you can't repeat the class in summer: this course is only offered once. No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with exactly the same kisses. One day, perhaps, some idle tongue mentions your name by accident: I feel as if a rose were flung into the room, all hue and scent. The next day, though you're here with me, I can't help looking at the clock: A rose? A rose? What could that be? Is it a flower or a rock? Why do we treat the fleeting day with so much needless fear and sorrow? It's in its nature not to stay: today is always gone tomorrow. With smiles and kisses, we prefer to seek accord beneath our star, although we're different (we concur) just as two drops of water are. — Wislawa Szymborska

My room was in one of those turrets and at night I could hear the sea and the faint rustle of eelgrass in the soft wind. The weather was perfect that summer. No storms. Blue skies and just the right amount of wind every day. The sailors were in heaven. — Katherine Hall Page

He let go of the rope one hand at a time and latched onto Lisa's hands. Her fingernails dug into his wrists, but her grip was strong after a summer of lifting girls into the air. It was a tug of war battle between his friends and Shawn's ghost. The wind died down as Shawn gathered all of his energy to pull on Mike. Even though he was terrified of what was happening, Mike knew that Shawn wasn't trying to hurt him. After all these years, he was still trying to find a way out. Shawn wanted to go home too, and he saw the hope of being rescued falling away.
"Shawn! Please! Let me go!" Mike called over the dying wind, "I'll get you help! We'll get you out! Just please! Let me go!"

- Saving Hascal's Horrors — Laura Smith

But how was one to be an adult? Was couplehood truly the only appropriate option? (But then, a sole option was no option at all.) "Thousands of years of evolutionary and social development and this is our only choice?" he'd asked Harold when they were up in Truro this past summer, and Harold had laughed. "Look, Willem," he said, "I think you're doing just fine. I know I give you a hard time about settling down, and I agree with Malcolm's dad that couplehood is wonderful, but all you really have to do is just be a good person, which you already are, and enjoy your life. You're young. You have years and years to figure out what you want to do and how you want to live. — Hanya Yanagihara

Look, here is a tree in the garden and every summer is produces apples, and we call it an apple tree because the tree "apples." That's what it does. Alright, now here is a solar system inside a galaxy, and one of the peculiarities of this solar system is that at least on the planet earth, the thing peoples! In just the same way that an apple tree apples! — Alan W. Watts

It's stupidly self-obsessed to try and explain the important moments of your life as something that happened to make you aware of how precious life is, or that someone came into your world to show you how to feel, and I know for certain that Livia Stowe's life whole life was not about making sure I had one perfect summer. Like everyone who has been in love, we just got lucky, but or luck ran out. — Kate Le Vann

You can feel people staring: it's like heat that rise from the pavement during summer, like a poker in the small of your back. You don't have to hear a whisper, either, to know that it's about you.
I use to stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom to see what they are staring at. I wanted to know what made their heads turn, what it was about me that was so incredibly different. At first I couldn't tell. I mean, I was just me.
Then one day. When I looked in the mirror, I understood. I looked into my own eyes and I hated myself, maybe as much as all of them did.
That was the day I started to believe they might be right.
jodi picoult — Jodi Picoult

The first time I came to London on my own, I was 15. I was absolutely oblivious to so many things. I had no expectations, no fears. I just came to do a National Youth Theatre season one summer. It was just brilliant. — Gina McKee

Percy smiled at her - that sarcastic, troublemaker smile that had annoyed her for years but eventually had become endearing. His sea-green eyes were as gorgeous as she remembered. His dark hair was swept to one side, like he'd just come from a walk on the beach. He looked even better than he had six months ago - tanner and taller, leaner and more muscular. Annabeth was too stunned to move. She felt that if she got any closer to him, all the molecules in her body might combust. She'd secretly had a crush on him since they were twelve years old. Last summer, she'd fallen for him hard. They'd been a happy couple for four months - and then he'd disappeared. — Rick Riordan

And he has never
given up his conviction that if you just try all the doors one of them is bound to be the Door into
Summer. You know, I think he is right. — Heinlein Robert A.

We're the Septembers now. The real ones. We are everything to one another. We don't need to say so; it's just true. Sometimes it seems like we're so close we form one single complete person rather than four separate ones. We settle into types- Bridget the athlete, Lena the beauty, Tibby the rebel, and me, Carmen, the ... what? The one with the bad temper. But the one who cares the most. The one who cares that we stick together. — Ann Brashares

I found this really fantastic used record store in Japan, and I bought all these different records and different 45s. And one of the 45s was just, it had the theme, "Green Leaves of Summer," the theme to "The Alamo" on one side, and then on the flip side was a theme to, the theme to "Magnificent Seven." — Quentin Tarantino

One thing we've learned this summer is that a house is not an end in itself, any more than "home" is just one geographic location where things feel safe and familiar. Home can be anyplace in which we create our own sense of rest and peace as we tend to the spaces in which we eat and sleep and play. It is a place that we create and re-create in every moment, at every stage of our lives, a place where the plain and common becomes cherished and the ordinary becomes sacred. — Katrina Kenison

I worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange back when they used to write tickets. And I was just a runner. So a guy would write a ticket and I would run it, and it was endless. That was a hard job. And I dug tungsten ... for a coal company in Wyoming one summer, and that was pretty miserable. — John C. McGinley

Summer, and he watches his children's heart break. Autumn again and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough. — Harper Lee

But here there were houses full of *stuff*, fancy sheets woven with silk floss as soft as a baby's bum; fancy washstands carved of dark wood that glowed like cherries where the light hit it; curtains the shade of the summer sky, heavy and glossy and smooth to the touch. The velvet-flocked wallpaper was so soft beneath her fingertips that had her eyes been closed, she might have thought she was brushing the belly of a rabbit.
And the stool in the corner! One wouldn't imagine you'd get too fancy with such a piece, but this stool was covered with embroidery so fine that her knuckles ached just looking at the stitches. Unbelievable. The rich even spoiled their arses! — Meredith Duran

There is a certain shade of red brick
a dark, almost melodious red, sombre and riddled with blue
that is my childhood in St.Louis. Not the real childhood, but the false one that extends from the dawning of consciousness until the day that one leaves home for college. That one shade of red brick and green foliage is St. Louis in the summer (the winter is just a gray sky and a crowded school bus and the wet footprints on the brown linoleum floor at school), and that brick and a pale sky is spring. It's also loneliness and the queer, self-pitying wonder that children whose families are having catastrophes feel. — Harold Brodkey

There is no seamen in the world who prefers a slow ship to a fast one. The painters painted better, the cooks took a little more time with the meals, and the technicians tightened the bolts just a little more. Their ship was no longer a cripple, and pride broke out in the crew like a rainbow after a summer shower. — Tom Clancy

(Until the end of their lives, these men and women would tell stories about the summer they followed Lyndon Johnson and his Flying Windmill around Texas; as Oliver Knight of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram would write about one trip, "That mad dash from Navasota to Conroe in which I dodged stumps at 70 MPH just to keep up with that contraption will ever be green in my memory.") At the landing site, there would be the brief respite — Robert A. Caro