That Summer Quotes

“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, 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, 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, That Summer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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