Simone Elkeles · 234 pages
Rating: (9.8K votes)
“And my piece of advice is...don't flirt with any of the female instructors. They all have access to weapons bigger than yours.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from How to Ruin a Summer Vacation
“Opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one and everyone thinks everyone else's stinks.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from How to Ruin a Summer Vacation
“Sometimes we have to prove to others we're strong even where we're not.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from How to Ruin a Summer Vacation
“Believe me, I know people who have doting Grandmas. Jessica's Grandma Pearl spent four years knitting her a blanket. Four years! And she's got arthritis. I wonder what Grandma Pearl would think if she knew Jessica lost her virginity to Michael Greenberg under the blanket she spent four years knitting with her crooked fingers.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from How to Ruin a Summer Vacation
“The threat of taking something away makes us appreciate it more.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from How to Ruin a Summer Vacation
“The end of one thing is just the beginning of another.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from How to Ruin a Summer Vacation
“You can run from some problems, but then you get caught up in others.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from How to Ruin a Summer Vacation
“—Ser judía es más algo de tu corazón que de tu mente. Para algunos, ser judío es seguir estrictamente las leyes y las costumbres de nuestros antepasados. Para otros, es ser parte de una comunidad. La religión es muy personal. Siempre estaré allí para ti si quieres o lo necesitas. Puedes elegir adoptar el judaísmo o decidir que tu vida no lo necesita. Nadie puede imponer la religión en ti o ésta no será real.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from How to Ruin a Summer Vacation
“How to forgive the world for its beauty, which merely disguises its ugliness; for its gentleness, which merely cloaks its cruelty; for its illusion of continuity, seamlessly, as the night follows the day, so to speak- whereas in reality life is a series of brutal raptures, falling upon your defenseless hands, like the blows of a woodman's axe?”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from The Moor's Last Sigh
“So there’s this annual dance in a couple of weeks.”
“The Winter Ball,” I interrupt. “There have been signs up everywhere.”
“You want to go?”
I think about it for a half second. “Will you dress up?”
He nods.
I move forward so my hands are flat on the towel and my face is much closer to his face. Something inside my chest warms up like a nice kind of heartburn and I say, “And will we slow dance?”
He nods again. His bottom lip turns in toward his mouth for a second, just disappears and then comes back.
Stretching out my spine so my lips are nearly touching his I say, “And will you press yourself against me and we’ll move really close together and then your hand will stretch out across the back of my head and your fingers will wrap into my hair and then . . .”
He doesn’t nod. He just tilts his head down, moves his fingers into my hair, and his lips touch mine in a forever kiss. His lips are soft and hard all at once. His breath mixes with my breath. Everything inside of me whooshes out.”
― Carrie Jones, quote from Captivate
“Just say it,” I beg. I need her to say it out loud. All I need is for her to admit she brought him here because she was hurt and scared. I need her to admit that there’s an actual heart inside her chest. And that sometimes it beats for me”
― Colleen Hoover, quote from Maybe Not
“The white missionaries brought us their god,” Amaka was saying. “Which was the same color as them, worshiped in their language and packaged in the boxes they made. Now that we take their god back to them, shouldn’t we at least repackage it?”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, quote from Purple Hibiscus
“There is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.”
― Ford Madox Ford, quote from The Good Soldier
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