The Summer Book Quotes

″‘It’s funny about love’, Sophia said. ‘The more you love someone, the less he likes you back.’ ‘That’s very true,’ Grandmother observed. ‘And so what do you do?’ ‘You go on loving,’ said Sophia threateningly. ‘You love harder and harder.‘”

“Even potted plants got to be a responsibility, like everything else you took care of that couldn’t make decisions for itself.”

″‘It’s funny about me,’ Sophia said. ‘I always feel like such a nice girl whenever there’s a storm.‘”

“The thing about God, she thought, is that He usually does help, but not until you’ve made an effort on your own.”

“Smell is important. It reminds a person of all the things he’s been through; it is a sheath of memories and security.”

“An island can be dreadful for someone from outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure and self-sufficient place. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are as hard as rock from repetition, and at the same time they amble through their days as whimsically and casually as if the world ended at the horizon.”

“Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you’re looking for. If you’re picking raspberries, you see only what’s red, and if you’re looking for bones you see only the white.”

“You let go of everything and get ready and just dive. You can feel the seaweed against your legs. It’s brown, and the water’s clear, lighter towards the top, with lots of bubbles. And you glide. You hold your breath and glide and turn and come up, let yourself rise and breathe out. And then you float. Just float.”

“Now everything was changed. She walked about with cautious, anxious steps, staring constantly at the ground, on the lookout for things that crept and crawled. Bushes were dangerous, and so were sea grass and rain water.”

″...you can’t depend on people who just let things happen.”