Quotes from How to Ruin a Summer Vacation

“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

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“Charlotte: Giordano is terribly afraid Gwyneth will get everything wrong tomorrow that she can get wrong.
Gideon: Pass the olive oil, please.
Charlotte: Politics and history are a closed book to Gwyneth. She can’t even remember names—they go in at one ear and straight out of the other. She can’t help it, her brain doesn’t have the capacity. It’s stuffed with the names of boy bands and long, long cast lists of actors in soppy romantic films.
Raphael: Gwyneth is your time-traveling cousin, right? I saw her yesterday in school. Isn’t she the one with long dark hair and blue eyes?
Charlotte: Yes, and that birthmark on her temple, the one that looks like a little banana.
Gideon: Like a little crescent moon.
Raphael: What’s that friend of hers called? The blonde with freckles? Lily?
Charlotte: Lesley Hay. Rather brighter than Gwyneth, but she’s a wonderful example of the way people get to look like their dogs. Hers is a shaggy golden retriever crossbreed called Bertie.
Raphael: That’s cute!
Charlotte: You like dogs?
Raphael: Especially golden retriever crossbreeds with freckles.
Charlotte: I see. Well, you can try your luck. You won’t find it particularly difficult. Lesley gets through even more boys than Gwyneth.
Gideon: Really? How many . . . er, boyfriends has Gwyneth had?
Charlotte: Oh, my God! This is kind of embarrassing. I don’t want to speak ill of her, it’s just that she’s not very discriminating. Particularly when she’s had a drink. She’s done the rounds of almost all the boys in our class and the class above us . . . I guess I lost track at some point. I’d rather not repeat what they call her.
Raphael: The school mattress?
Gideon: Pass the salt, please.”
― Kerstin Gier, quote from Sapphire Blue

“Through this evening of sentences cut short because their completed meaning was always sorrow, of normal life dissolved to tears, the chords of Beethoven sounded serenely.”
― Rebecca West, quote from The Return of The Soldier

“I can't say I have much experience with conscience. I wasn't born with that particular cricket on my shoulder.”
― Mary Elizabeth Summer, quote from Trust Me, I'm Lying

“Los espejos y la cópula son abominables, porque multiplican el número de los hombres.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from Fictions

“There was and is no danger of military domination of the nation. The Constitution gave Congress the power of life or death over the military, and they have always accepted the fact. The danger has been the other way around—the liberal society, in its heart, wants not only domination of the military, but acquiesence of the military toward the liberal view of life.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, quote from This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness

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