Reads For Summer Quotes

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
32. I think I could turn and live with animals, they're so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.
They do not make me sick discussiong their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth.
52. The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world. ~ Walt Whitman

A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is, of course, the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him into the reading room. He managed to state that one, he was playing "classical" music; that two, he was doing it "softly"; and that three, "there were not many readers around in summer." I was there, a one-man multitude. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

If. If Mingus Rude could be kept in this place, kept somehow in Dylan's pocket, in his stinging, smudgy hands, then summer wouldn't give way to whatever came after. If. If. Fat chance. Summer on Dean Street had lasted one day and that day was over, it was dark out, had been for hours. The Williamsburg Savings Bank tower clock read nine-thirty in red-and-blue neon. Final score, a million to nothing. The million-dollar kid.
Your school wasn't on fire, you were. ~ Jonathan Lethem

This? This is Putopia," says Dr. A, the tall guy with the curly hair who was trying to catch the grape in his mouth. He's wearing a T-shirt under his lab coat that reads MY BANG THEORY IS BIGGER THAN YOURS.

"Putopia?" I repeat.

"Yes. Putopia. It stands for Parallel Universe Travel Office... pia. ~ Libba Bray

In addition, help your children learn self-discipline by such activities as learning to play a musical instrument or other demanding skill. I am reminded of the story of the salesman who came to a house one hot summer day. Through the screen door he could see a young boy practicing his scales on the piano. His baseball glove and hat were by the side of the piano bench. He said, "Say, boy, is your mother home?" To which the boy replied, "What do you think?" Thank heavens for conscientious parents! ~ Joe J. Christensen

Better to work for one's self alone. The public is so stupid. Who reads? And what do they read?
And what do they admire? Ah, blessed peaceful times of the past, blessed eras of powdered wigs! You lived with complete assurance, poised on your high heels, twirling your silver-headed canes! Beneath us the earth is trembling. Where can we place our fulcrum, even admitting that we possess the lever? The thing we all lack is not style, nor that dexterity of finger and bow known as talent. We have a large orchestra, a rich palette, a variety of resources. We know many more tricks and dodges, probably, than were ever known before. No; what we lack is the intrinsic principle, the soul of the thing, the very idea of the subject.We take notes, we make journeys: emptiness! Emptiness! We become scholars, archaeologists, historians, doctors, cobblers, connoisseurs. What good is all that? Where is the heart, the verve, the sap? Where to start out from? Where to go to? ~ Gustave Flaubert

He comes where we are, and he brings us the life we hunger for. An early report reads, "Life was in him, life that made sense of human existence" (John 1:4). To be the light of life, and to deliver God's life to women and men where they are and as they are, is the secret of the enduring relevance of Jesus. Suddenly they are flying right-side up, in a world that makes sense. ~ Dallas Willard

Have a fake ID." I snatched it from his hands and smiled. "Where the heck did you get this?!" His eyes shifted back to Avery. "I know people who know people." "Burt Summerstone?" I asked, reading his name off the card. He took it back from me and slid it into his pocket. "It's not about the name, baby girl. It's about the date. I am officially a twenty-one-year-old high school student. And we are officially getting drunk and crossing that item off of your bucket list. Bow down, bitches." He pulled out a fake ID for me and I grinned. Summer Burtstone. How creative. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger. They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis's pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis's breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredging up a rusty but still useable phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, said, "Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you're sleepin on your feet like a horse," and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in the darkness. Jack heard his spurs tremble as he mounted, the words "see you tomorrow," and the horse's shuddering snort, grind of hoof on stone. Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to ~ Annie Proulx

Here is my room, in the yellow lamplight and the space heater rumbling: Indian rug red as Cochise's blood, a desk with seven mystic drawers, a chair covered in material as velvety blue-black as Batman's cape, an aquarium holding tiny fish so pale you could see their hearts beat, the aforementioned dresser covered with decals from Revell model airplane kits, a bed with a quilt sewn by a relative of Jefferson Davis's, a closet, and the shelves, oh, yes, the shelves. The troves of treasure. On those shelves are stacks of me: hundreds of comic books- Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, the Spirit, Blackhawk, Sgt. Rock and Easy Company, Aquaman, and the Fantastic Four ... The shelves go on for miles and miles. My collection of marbles gleams in a mason jar. My dried cicada waits to sing again in the summer. My Duncan yo-yo that whistles except the string is broken and Dad's got to fix it. ~ Robert McCammon

Spring is for planting the seed because the morning dew is perfect! It has the right amount of sun and the breeze is blowing gently to mold the seed in its rightful order.

Summer is for growth because the sun rises at the right time and sets later in the evening to feed the developing seeds as we wait patiently.

Fall is for the harvest, as we gather and collect it. During the harvest we have to make a decision to either keep unwelcome visitors in our life or move forward with producing peace in our life.

Our harvest season is to enable us to produce action.

Winter is for recovery as we rest and take it easy to see what our hard work will produce in our up and coming seasons.

In order to reap from the planting of the seeds, it takes time and patience. We have sowed and produce our harvest. It is hard and time consuming, but we cannot give up. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

If you are very lucky, you're allowed to be in certain places during just the right season of your life: by the sea for the summer when you're seven or eight and full of the absolute need to swim until dark and exhaustion close their hands together, cupping you in between. ~ Jonathan Carroll

In the 1950s, the Biophysics Laboratory at the University of Geneva was lucky enough to receive each summer for several months the visit of Jean Weigle. He was the former professor of experimental physics at the University of Geneva. ~ Werner Arber

The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter-such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if anyone should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself? ~ Henry David Thoreau

When Jennifer was here in the summer, they were at the house most days. I would say generally that as they got older they became quieter, and though I enjoyed both, I sometimes missed the giggles and shouts. The quiet voices, just low enough for me not to hear from wherever I was, rising and failing in proportion to my distance from them, frightened me. Not that I believed they were planning or recounting anything really wicked, but there was a female seriousness about them, and it was secretive, and of course I thought: love, sex. But it was more than that: it was womanhood they were entering, the deep forest of it, and no matter how many women and men too are saying these days that there is little difference between us, the truth is that men find their way into that forest only on clearly marked trails, while women move about in it like birds. So hearing Jennifer and her friends talking so quietly, yet intensely, I wanted very much to have a wife. ~ Andre Dubus

Love is not a feeling to pass away
Like the balmy breath of a Summer's day ...
Love is not a passion of earthly mould
As a thirst for honour, or fame, or gold ~ Charles Dickens

Bird honked again. She has her own car. I share one with Tiffany, but she'd already called it for the day. Actually, she'd called it pretty much for the entire summer, and since she had "obligations," I was used to her getting what she wanted. Especially guys. I basically carry a mop to clean up their drool whenever she's around. ~ Rachel Hawthorne

In the summer of 1876 in Montana while George Armstrong Custer and his troops were being cut down at Little Big Horn, Cope was out hunting for bones nearby. When it was pointed out to him that this was probably not the most prudent time to be taking treasures from Indian lands, Cope thought for a minute and decided to press on anyway. ~ Bill Bryson

On the Hunger Games Fan Race fail and the portrayal of POC in fantasy literature:
It is as if the POC in the text are walking around with a great big red sign over them for some editors and it reads I AM NOT A REAL CHARACTER. I AM A PROBLEM YOU MUST DEAL WITH. The white characters are permitted to saunter about with their physical descriptions hanging out all over the place, but best not make mention of dark skin or woolly/curly hair or dark eyes (Unless, of course, that character is white. None of my white-skinned dark-eyed characters had any problem being described as such. And I'm pretty sure that Sól's curly hair never gave anyone a single pause for thought.) As I said, I understand the desire not to define a POC simply by their physical attributes, and I understand cutting physical descriptions if no other character is described physically – but pussyfooting about in this manner with POC is doing nothing but white wash the characters themselves. It's already much too hard to get readers to latch onto the fact that some characters may not be caucasian, why must we dance about their physical description as if it were some kind of shameful dirty little secret. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of the way homosexuality used to only ever be hinted at in texts. It was up to the reader to 'read between the lines' or 'its there if you look for it' and all that total bullshit which used to be the norm. ~ Celine Kiernan

...for most of the ride through British Columbia we were treated to stunning scenery ranging from majestic peaks shrouded in mist to more barren vistas reminiscent of the Old West ... to churning rivers fed by waterfalls twisting down mountains like the woven tassels on the white summer Chanel bag I'd left back home. Do waterfalls ever feel unfashionable after Labor Day ~ Doreen Orion

Hello, Not-There, Piper said. Not-There was her private name for God just lately. Earlier in the fall it had been The Great Maybe. During the summer, it had been The Omnipotent Could-Be. ~ Stephen King

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

She is like the morning," he said. "With that golden hair, those blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer morning. The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call such a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an orphan. She is the child of the universe. ~ Charles Dickens

Lists

I've been keeping a list on my phone of business ideas, should I chance upon an adventurous millionaire. So far it reads:

1. Black milk (for goths?) ~ Lisa Owens

As a kid in New Zealand, you play cricket in summer and rugby in winter. I played cricket and hockey. Not rugby. I wasn't brawny enough for it. Or silly enough, perhaps. ~ Glenn Turner

No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike. Times change, and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I hung up the phone after saying good night to Marlboro Man, this isolated cowboy who hadn't had the slightest probably picking up the phone to say "I miss you." I shuddered at the thought of how long I'd gone without it. And judging from the electrical charges searing through every cell of my body, I realized just how fundamental a human need it really is.
It was as fundamental a human need, I would learn, as having a sense of direction in the dark. I suddenly realized I was lost on the long dirt road, more lost than I'd ever been before. The more twists and turns I took in my attempt to find my bearings, the worse my situation became. It was almost midnight, and it was cold, and each intersection looked like the same one repeating over and over. I found myself struck with an illogical and indescribable panic--the kind that causes you to truly believe you'll never, ever escape from where you are, even though you almost always will. As I drove, I remembered every horror movie I'd ever watched that had taken place in a rural setting. Children of the Corn. The children of the corn were lurking out there in the tall grass, I just knew it. Friday the 13th. Sure, it had taken place at a summer camp, but the same thing could happen on a cattle ranch. And The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? Oh no. I was dead. Leatherface was coming--or even worse, his freaky, emaciated, misanthropic brother.
I kept driving for a while, then stopped on the side of the road. Shining my brights on ~ Ree Drummond

It was a warm summer night of a kiss at first. Gentle. Romanic. It matched the dreaminess he'd seen in her eyes when she talked about lovers bathed in starlight.

She couldn't know what she did to him when she had peered up at him, a mixture of sweet innocence and curious desire all at once. He had waged a war within himself. He should leave, he'd thought. If nothing else in his life remained true, he was a gentleman. And gentlemen did not ravish young innocents in their guardian's library.
But when her milky skin flushed pink, he'd lost the battle. Even their talk of consequences had done nothing to tamp down the need that consumed him. For just a taste.

Just a taste. ~ Brianna Labuskes

And here for the first time in my life I saw my beloved Mississippi River, dry in the summer haze, low water, with its big rank smell that smells like the raw body of America itself because it washes it up. ~ Jack Kerouac

When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours. And thus this benefit renders him pleasing to us, besides that such community of intellect as we have with him necessarily inclines the heart to love. ~ Anonymous

During the year, our schools are busy slashing P.E. and recess to make more time for math. During the summer, we get ourselves worked into a tizzy that our children will forget their fractions. ~ Darell Hammond

O craving heart, for the lost flowers/ And sunshine of my summer hours!/ The undying voice of that dead time,/ With its interminable chime,/ Rings in the spirit of a spell, / Upon thy emptiness
a knell. / I have not always been as now: ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Let your children be as so many flowers, borrowed from God. If the flowers die or wither, thank God for a summer loan of them. ~ Samuel Rutherford

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning, but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Whilst I stood, a solemn wind began to blow - the most mournful that ear ever heard. Mournful! That is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a thousand centuries. Many times since, upon a summer day, when the sun is at its hottest, I have heard the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell: it is in this world the one sole audible symbol of eternity. ~ Thomas De Quincey

You want to go to a summer concert and not watch a band staring at its shoes for six hours and complaining. ~ Bret Michaels

A cloud-congested caul that is alternately red, orange, vermilion, purple. Sometimes the clouds break apart in great, slow rafts, letting through beams of innocent yellow sunlight that are bitterly nostalgic for the summer that has gone by. ~ Stephen King

If you have not confronted true horrors, understood evil, suffered hopelessness and despair, found faith, and made yourself completely accountable for your own choices, actions and outcomes, then I can guarantee that any acceptance you pretend to have will be as brittle and temporary as a snowball in the middle of summer. ~ Graeme Rodaughan

Withstanding the cold develops vigor for the relaxing days of spring and summer. Besides, in this matter as in many others, it is evident that nature abhors a quitter. ~ Arthur C. Crandall

Both Mitt and I have summer places up in New Hampshire on Lake Winnipesaukee. And a few summers ago I was taking my grandchildren and children to town in the boat for ice cream ... And I realized there was nobody in the boat to help me dock the boat, handle the ropes, do anything ... And I looked up and there was Mitt Romney. So he pulled me in, he tied up the boat for me. He rescued me just as he's going to rescue this great country. ~ J.W. "Bill" Marriott Jr.