Summer Where You At Quotes & Sayings

Let's go," I said.
"Go where?"
"On Lori's date with Parker."
Now he looked at me over the nerdy spectacles he wore for reading.
"I wasn't aware it was a double date. And you're not my type. — Jennifer Echols

A Farewell For a while I shall still be leaving, Looking back at you as you slip away Into the magic islands of the mind. But for a while now all alive, believing That in a single poignant hour We did say all that we could ever say In a great flowing out of radiant power. It was like seeing and then going blind. After a while we shall be cut in two Between real islands where you live And a far shore where I'll no longer keep The haunting image of your eyes, and you, As pupils widen, widen to deep black And I am able neither to love or grieve Between fulfillment and heartbreak. The time will come when I can go to sleep. But for a while still, centered at last, Contemplate a brief amazing union, Then watch you leave and then let you go. I must not go back to the murderous past Nor force a passage through to some safe landing, But float upon this moment of communion Entranced, astonished by pure understanding - Passionate love dissolved like summer snow. — May Sarton

Hakan was a chieftain ready for battle. Fear, the haze of it like when the Danes had attacked her village, skittered across her skin.
"Break the fast with me," she pleaded softly.
He hooked a finger under her chin. "You've convinced me to do many things I've not done before." He looked at the trees where her loom sat idle. "Like spend a summer day in the shade, and now you want me to keep my ship, my men, waiting. What will you have me do next?"He paused as if drinking in the sight of her. He hadn't shaved, and his jaw bore several days' growth. She itched to know the feel of those blonde whiskers. Her lips parted with bold, unspoken invitation. — Gina Conkle

What Whileawayans Celebrate

The full moon
The Winter solstice (You haven't lived if you haven't seen us running around in our skivvies, banging on pots and pans, shouting "Come back, sun! Goddammit, come back! Come back!")
The Summer solstice (rather different)
The autumnal equinox
The vernal equinox
The flowering of trees
The flowering of bushes
The planting of seeds
Happy copulation
Unhappy copulation
Longing
Jokes
Leaves falling off the trees (where deciduous)
Acquiring new shoes
Wearing same
Birth
The contemplation of a work of art
Marriages
Sport
Divorces
Anything at all
Nothing at all
Great ideas
Death — Joanna Russ

What do you know? This is where it all began," he said.
"Began?"
"This is exactly where I was when I wanted to kiss you," he whispered, his lips brushing along my neck causing me to melt under his touch. "So bad."
"Except this time there's no drunk netballer squawking at us," I teased.
"I wouldn't care if the seven horseman of the Apocalypse charged through the garden right now, nothing's gonna stop me from doing this." He leaned down and captured my lips with tenderness, a completely perfect kiss, like it always was. — C.J. Duggan

I love the Autumn,
And yet I cannot say
All the thoughts and things
That make me feel this way.

I love walking on the angry shore,
To watch the angry sea;
Where summer people were before,
But now there's only me.

I love wood fires at night
That have a ruddy glow.
I stare at the flames
And think of long ago.

I love the feeling down inside me
That says to run away
To come and be a gypsy
And laugh the gypsy way.

The tangy taste of apples,
The snowy mist at morn,
The wanderlust inside you
When you hear the huntsman's horn.

Nostalgia - that's the Autumn,
Dreaming through September
Just a million lovely things
I always will remember. — Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

In 1992, as we sought to establish our permanent terrestrial campus, we put out an RFP (request for proposals) that basically said, "Hi there, we're ISU. We have this concept for a permanent campus. We've held five summer programs in five different cities, and this is our vision for what we want to create and where we want to go. Please tell us how much cash endowment, buildings, and operational money you will give us to bring our vision to your city." Had we gotten no response at all, I would not have been surprised. But that wasn't the case. Within six months, we received seven proposals ranging from $20 million to $50 million in funding, buildings, faculty, equipment, and even the promise of accreditation. In short, everything we needed to implement the next phase of ISU. — Peter H. Diamandis

This is the circus of Dr. Lao.
We show you things that you don't know.
We tell you of places you'll never go.
We've searched the world both high and low
To capture the beasts for this marvelous show
From mountains where maddened winds did blow
To islands where zephyrs breathed sweet and low.
Oh, we've spared no pains and we've spared no dough;
And we've dug at the secrets of long ago;
And we've risen to Heaven and plunged Below,
For we wanted to make it one hell of a show.
And the things you'll see in your brains will glow
Long past the time when the winter snow
Has frozen the summer's furbelow.
For this is the circus of Dr. Lao.
And youth may come and age may go;
But no more circuses like this show! — Charles Grandison Finney

God what an outfield,' he says. 'What a left field.' He looks up at me, and I look down at him. 'This must be heaven,' he says.
No. It's Iowa,' I reply automatically. But then I feel the night rubbing softly against my face like cherry blossoms; look at the sleeping girl-child in my arms, her small hand curled around one of my fingers; think of the fierce warmth of the woman waiting for me in the house; inhale the fresh-cut grass small that seems locked in the air like permanent incense; and listen to the drone of the crowd, as below me Shoelss Joe Jackson tenses, watching the angle of the distant bat for a clue as to where the ball will be hit.
I think you're right, Joe,' I say, but softly enough not to disturb his concentration. — W.P. Kinsella

If you don't want my services, then it's only fair you cut me loose so I can make another girl or two happy this summer. Or three." He shifts my papers into a neater pile.
"What will they do once I take you off the market?" I ask. "I can only imagine the poor girls wandering around like a lost herd of sheep all summer, wondering where you went." I risk another glance at the staring girls and shudder. "Do they even blink? Baa. Baa. Baa. — Anne Eliot

Before we light the Yule log, I want to give you this. You have been a very good girl this year, and a wonderful daughter." He held something out to her. Jaclyn hadn't noticed he was carrying anything. She looked down to see he was holding a branch with green leaves and white berries. She gasped, "It's beautiful!" and took the branch from his hand. "The berries reminded me of the winter snow," her father said softly. Jaclyn nodded. "But the green leaves belong in the summer!" She looked up at him. "The trees have long since lost their leaves. Where did you find it?" "I had to travel very far to find it." he told her, leaning in to add, "It's magical. — Laurel O'Donnell

Near home I ran through our park, where I had aired my children on weekends and late-summer afternoons. I stopped at the northeast playground, where I met a dozen young mothers intelligently handling their little ones. In order to prepare them, meaning no harm, I said, In fifteen years, you girls will be like me, wrong in everything — Grace Paley

It seems to me that when you look back at a life - yours or another's - what you see is a path that weaves into and out of deep shadow. So much is lost. What we use to construct the past is what has remained in the open, a hodgepodge of fleeting glimpses. Our histories, like my father's current body, are structures built of toothpicks. So what I recall of that last summer in New Bremen is a construct of both what stands in the light and what I imagine in the dark where I cannot see. — William Kent Krueger

He gave her a smile that wasn't really a smile at all. "Eh, it wouldn't be so bad. I wouldn't have to study for the SATs or get a summer job or figure out my major. I can drink Elderflower wine all day, dance all through the night, and sleep on a bower of roses."
Hazel made a face. "I'm pretty sure there are some colleges where you can do that. I bet there are some colleges where you can major in that. — Holly Black

Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don't believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity. — Anna Quindlen

Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams
1
I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next
summer.
I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do
and its wooden beams were so inviting.
2
We laughed at the hollyhocks together
and then I sprayed them with lye.
Forgive me. I simply do no know what I am doing.
3
I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the
next ten years.
The man who asked for it was shabby
and the firm March wind on the porch was so juicy and cold.
4
Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg.
Forgive me. I was clumsy and
I wanted you here in the wards, where I am the doctor! — Kenneth Koch

You're in Ireland the summer after you left college and you're drinking at a pub near the castle where every day bus loads of English and American tourists come to kiss the Blarney Stone. — Chuck Palahniuk

Maybe we can help. Where are you from? I've never seen you around here before. And, how did you get that cut? Where are you staying?" He shook his head and giggled. "Are you the police? You ask a lot of questions Phoenix." "No. I just ... never mind." I wanted to know more about him. The way those sparkly green eyes gazed at me. The way his dimples sunk deep into his cheeks, as he smiled and said my name with his deep voice. — N.I.

In Sacramento it is fiery summer always, and you can gather roses, and eat strawberries and ice cream, and wear white linen clothes, and pant and perspire, at eight or nine o'clock in the morning, and then take the cars, and at noon put on your furs and your skates, and go skimming over frozen Donner Lake...There is transition for you! Where will you find another like it in the western hemisphere? — Mark Twain

Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew; Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you, you pattern of all those. — William Shakespeare

If you do not have - right now - an FAL, M1, M1A, or HK91, then there is something you have chosen not to own for your freedom. If you do own such a rifle but cannot - right now - from offhand position hit a dinner plate at 100yds within 5 seconds on demand without fail, then there is a skill you have chosen not to earn for your freedom. If you are not a Rifleman - right now - then you have announced to the world that your commitment to liberty goes only just so far. If you will not spend a summer and the price of a used jetski to become a Rifleman - to become a deadly foe of tyranny - then you are just mouthing platitudes, treating liberty as a hobby and expecting brave men to do your fighting for you. If you're not a Rifleman - you're just a hobbyist. By choosing to move to a state where you can't become a Rifleman, a hobbyist is what you'll remain. — Boston T. Party

Cause this place is a home away from home where you can forget about all that painful stuff and just be yourself with the people who, like, truly get - or at least truly want to get - who you are. — Stacy Davidowitz

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

How about that one? Is that a constellation?" I asked, pointing upward. We were down in the small valley where the truck was parked. Alex sat leaning against a rock; I was between his legs with my back against his chest, his arms around me as we stared up at the stars.
"Yeah, that's the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades." He bent his head, and I caught my breath as his warm mouth nuzzled at my neck. I hadn't gotten even remotely used yet to how good it felt to be kissed by Alex.
"It's so sexy how you know all of this," I said when I could speak again.
"Yeah?" I heard the grin in his voice. "I know the summer constellations, too. Will that get me bonus kisses?"
"I think it might, actually. — L.A. Weatherly

My Christmas present? That's nice. But I'm not really in the mood to - "
"Open the goddamn thing or I'll kill you where you stand."
"Sir! Opening it." She ripped the paper, stuffed it hurriedly in her pocket, and pulled off the lid. "It's a key code."
"That's right. It's to the ground transpo that'll be at the airport over in that foreign country. Air transpo's been arranged, for two, on one of Roarke's private shuttles. Round trip. Merry fricking Christmas. Do what you want with it."
"I - you - one of the shuttles? Free?" Peabody's cheeks went pink as a summer rose. "And - and - and - a vehicle when we get there? It's so ... It's so seriously mag."
"Great. Can we go now?"
"Dallas!"
"No. No. No hugs. No hugs. No. Oh, shit," she muttered as Peabody threw her arms around her and squeezed. "We're on duty, we're in public. Let me go or I swear I'll kick your ass so hard that extra five pounds you're whining about will end up in Trenton. — J.D. Robb

The next morning, I woke up to hear Becky moaning and rustling around in her bed covers.
"I'm so itchy!" she cried.
"So scratch!" I said, groggily, but suddenly, I felt itchy too.
So, I started scratching my legs. They felt better until I stopped scratching. Then, it started to burn. I threw back the covers and saw that my legs were covered in red bumps.
"My legs!" I yelled.
Becky looked over at me. Then, she pulled back her covers. Her legs were even worse. She gasped.
"Mom!" I cried.
Mom came in. She was ready for work, wearing her dress shirt and gym shorts. She only had to dress up the top half of her body in case she had to use her webcam to talk to her boss.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Look!" I said, showing her our legs.
"Oh no! That's poison ivy!" she cried, "Where were you guys playing yesterday?"
"The woods," I said.
"You must have been sitting in it," she said.

- The Castle Park Kids — Laura Smith

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

She saw her mother appearing at her bedroom door. "Daddy and I want to talk to you about something." It would not happen to Liam the way it had happened to her. Over her dead body. It was the one thing she'd always known she could and would spare him from. Her beautiful, grave-faced little boy would not feel the loss and confusion she'd felt that awful summer all those years ago. He would not pack a little overnight bag every second Friday. He would not have to check a calendar on the refrigerator to see where he was sleeping each weekend. He would not learn to think before he spoke whenever one parent asked a seemingly innocuous question about the other. — Liane Moriarty

I've never had a diamond before, and now I've got a diamond surrounded by other diamonds and diamonds in places where, frankly, you don't need diamonds at all, and I would have been happy with a piece of twine. — Summer Phoenix

Don't you want to take a last look at the place?" he asked Hedwig, who was still sulking with her head under her wing. "We'll never be here again. Don't you want to remember all the good times? I mean, look at this doormat. What memories . . . Dudley puked on it after I saved him from the dementors . . . Turns out he was grateful after all, can you believe it? . . . And last summer, Dumbledore walked through that front door . . . ."
Harry lost the thread of his thoughts for a moment and Hedwig did nothing to help him retrieve it, but continued to sit with her head under her wing. Harry turned his back on the front door.
"And under here, Hedwig" - Harry pulled open a door under the stairs - "is where I used to sleep! You never knew me then - Blimey, it's small, I'd forgotten . . . . — J.K. Rowling

You are mad to be spending the summer in the country, where the days are too quiet and you have so much time to think. In the city you live on Broadway, where the noise is so thick your scary thoughts can't get a word in edgewise. But here in the county, there is only space. On the stone bridge by the stream. On the mossy rock at the edge of the yard. Behind the abandoned trailer where Art, the old man with the glass eye, used to live. Space, space, space, and you can scare yourself into thinking your thoughts are more like voices. — Lena Dunham

A story in a book has its own intentions, even if unknowable to the virgin reader, who just lollops along at her own pace regardless of the author's strategies, and gets where she will. After all, a book can be set aside for weeks, or for good. (Burned in the grate.) Alternatively, a story can be adored for centuries. But it cannot be derailed. A plot, whether abandoned by a reader or pursued rapturously, remains itself, and gets where it is headed even if nobody is looking. It is progressive and inevitable as the seasons. Winter still comes after autumn though you may have died over the summer. — Gregory Maguire

I don't call people for help. It's not because of the way I was raised, at least I don't think so; it's the
way I was made. Johanna once said that if I was drowning at Dark Score Lake, where we have a summer home, I would die silently fifty feet out from the public beach rather than yell for help. It's
not a question of love or affection. I can give those and I can take them. I feel pain like anyone else.
I need to touch and be touched. But if someone asks me, 'Are you all right?' I can't answer no. I
can't say help me. — Stephen King

Another part of Bit's unifying urban theory is sprinklers, that you can gauge a neighborhood's wealth by the way people water. If every house has an automatic system, you're looking at a six-figure mean. If the majority lug hoses around, it's more lower-middle class. And if they don't bother with the lawns ... well, that's the sort of shitburg where Bit and Julie always lived, except for that little place they rented in Wenatchee the summer Bit worked at the orchard. — Jess Walter