Quotes from That Summer

Sarah Dessen ·  208 pages

Rating: (47.8K votes)


“Maybe not," she said as we came to the car. "But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is always the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“It’s funny how one summer can change everything. It must be something about the heat and the smell of chlorine, fresh-cut grass and honeysuckle, asphalt sizzling after late-day thunderstorms, the steam rising while everything drips around it. Something about long, lazy days and whirring air conditioners and bright plastic flip-flops from the drugstore thwacking down the street. Something about fall being so close, another year, another Christmas, another beginning. So much in one summer, stirring up like the storms that crest at the end of each day, blowing out all the heat and dirt to leave everything gasping and cool. Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“But maybe that isn't so bad. You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first boy is ialways the hardest to get over, Haven. It's just the way the world works.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“Sometimes things don't turn out the way you want them to, Haven. Sometimes the people you choose to believe are wrong.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“It's not always so simple, Haven. Sometimes there isn't a good guy and a bad guy. Sometimes even the ones you want to believe turn out to be liars.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer



“My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“It was just perfect, just right all at once.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“I knew that it wouldn’t last. It was just a moment, a perfect moment, as time stood still and fleetingly everything fell back into its proper place.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“Everything looks different when you're older, not staring up at the world but down upon it.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“Some things you don't have to tell. Some things, between sisters, are understood.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer



“At every wedding someone stays home.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“It’s funny how one summer can change everything.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“He doesn’t love me. He might still love me as I was at fifteen, when I didn’t know any better. When I trusted everyone. I’m not that person any more. He’s just a boy. He was the first to really hurt me, but he’s just a boy. There were a lot of them.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer



“The first boy was always the hardest.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“We can’t be sad about it forever, you know? We’ve got to think back to the good times and just remember them; that’s all we can do. We can’t worry about the past or what happened at the end, any more. I can’t and you can’t.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“A united front announcing a split.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“I knew it then. For me and her, there wasn’t any time left to think back to that summer and the beach and a boy who charmed us and disappointed us. There was only what stretched out ahead, years full of new summers and promise, with all the time in the world left to start again. My sister, who never understood most of the things I wanted her to, might have been able to understand what had happened to me in this summer of weddings and beginnings. And she was right. The first boy was always the hardest.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer



“I’d never been in love, never felt that surge of feeling or that fall from its graces. I’d only watched as others weathered it: my mother in her garden, Sumner on the front lawn all those years ago, Ashley sobbing from the other side of a wall. I sat kerbside with my best friend and held her, trying to shoulder some of the hurt. There’s only so much you can do, in these situations.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“My father’s new life was progressing as planned, one neat step at a time. And I felt it, again, that same feeling I got whenever another change or shift in my life was announced to me – selling the house, Ashley’s tantrums, now the baby – that need to dig in my heels and prepare myself for the next shock and its aftermath. I was tired of hanging on, taking the torn pieces to make something whole with them.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“Sometimes love can be an ugly thing.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“Sometimes there isn't a good guy or a bad guy. Sometimes even the ones you want to believe turn out to be liars.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer


“The tight, throbbing feeling in my throat made me want to start sobbing, to break down, right there on an unfamiliar corner in front of a house just like my own. Everything seemed so out of control, as if even running the streets wouldn’t save me. I wondered if this was how she felt running wild at night, this lost, loose feeling that no consequence could be so harmful as the sense of staying where you were, or of being who you are. I wanted to be somewhere else, out of the range of my mother’s voice and ears, of Ashley’s pouty looks, of the News Channel 5 viewing area. A place where the sight of my sobbing would tie me to no one and no one to me.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from That Summer



About the author

Sarah Dessen
Born place: in Illinois, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“I could never live out completely one full experience, one point of consciousness in time and space. My dreams, if dreams they may be called, were rhymeless and reasonless.”
― Jack London, quote from The Star Rover


“Me dolía todo y en el mundo hacía frío y hasta las estrellas me parecían malvadas, agudos trozos de blanco que sobresalían de todo aquel negro.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Ketchup Clouds


“-Te dije que sonaría como una...
-No, no es así
SÍ, SÍ QUE ES ASÍ
Shhh.
ESTE ES MI INFIERNO, LO JURO. CUANDO PASE A MEJOR VIDA Y ME CASTIGUEN POR MIS PECADOS, ESTE SERÁ MI TORMENTO. VIVIRÉ RODEADO POR UN MAR DE ADOLESCENTES NIÑOSMONOS ENAMORADOS. CHAPOTEANDO EN CHARCOS DE SU PROPIA BABA.”
― Jay Kristoff, quote from Kinslayer


“The simultaneous existence and shared residence of such opposite moods and feelings is well-illustrated by Franz Schubert's assertion that whenever he sat down to write songs of love he wrote songs of pain, and whenever he sat down to write songs of pain he wrote songs of love.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, quote from Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament


“Where does a man go when there are no more corners to turn, when he's running out of hope, out of luck, out of time?”
― Doug Stanton, quote from In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors


Interesting books

Necromancing the Stone
(4.7K)
Necromancing the Sto...
by Lish McBride
Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart
(6.6K)
Why Men Marry Bitche...
by Sherry Argov
Storm Ravaged
(3.1K)
Storm Ravaged
by Magda Alexander
The Storyteller
(3.2K)
The Storyteller
by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Lady In The Van
(7.1K)
The Lady In The Van
by Alan Bennett
The Law of Success
(6.8K)
The Law of Success
by Napoleon Hill

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.