The Summer Prince Quotes

“To love light, you have to love dark. I'm not trying to be profound, I know you'll understand. I don't mean that you have to hate to love, or that you have to die to live.
I mean that sometimes, you turn out the lights just to turn them back on.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“The past stands in the path of the future, knowing it will be crushed.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“But I know better than anyone how dangerous trying can be, and how destructive. Maybe it's better to let bad things happen than tear yourself apart trying to stop the inevitable.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“They think they've gone to heaven," he says. "They don't realize that means they're dead.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“There's a song", I say.
"There's always a song", he says.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“What is this, Enki?” says the Queen. “Do you not honor me?”

Enki’s smile is wide and bright. “I give you the greatest honor,” he says.

“You are dressed in the manner of a slave,” says she, “in a city where there are none.”

“There aren’t,” he agrees, though now his smile seems too sharp for his words. “But there is the verde.”

“And what of it?”

“I am dressed in the manner of my people.”

“Are we not your people?” And we see that the Queen is torn between amusement and anger. Enki is leading her in a dance, but has not tapped out its rhythm.

“You are everything to me.”

“And yet you come before us hardly as a king.”

“I come before you,” says Enki, “as a simple verde boy.” He takes a quick step back, almost skipping, and his dust-lightened hair bobs around his ears. “I will leave you as a king.” And when the drums start, that’s how he dances: as a king.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“In the dark, I seem to stretch. Without a body to witness, I grow and grow with my pleasure. I feel like a constellation, a concept hung on a scattering of stars.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“So I take my lover, my king, and I put him in a pedestal and I cut him down. A man, like the ones who ruined the world.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“You can’t samba in a data stream,”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“When the world is destroyed, someone must remake the world. I think you’d call that art.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“The summer kings are gods, and we are finally, in the end, just men.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“I’m nothing but forward momentum and a curse.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“Just looking at him makes me short of breath, makes me want to cry, makes me want to rage and scream.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“How much of yourself will you give them in exchange?”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“The kings die so that their choice of the next Queen can be irrevocable, unassailable, and unprejudiced.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“A good rival is almost like a friend, isn’t she? You make me try harder.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“He says this last with his cheek against mine. I think my heart might run away inside my chest. I think he knows.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“The summer king customarily delivers a brief poem or statement before he convenes the special sessions. Enki gives them quite a bit more than that. “In the verde,” says Enki, as serious as I’ve ever seen him, “we love the storms. Sometimes, when we see one come in, the blocos will set up in the terraces and play until the rain drives us inside.” He pauses here, as though considering his next words, though I can tell he’s just savoring the moment. My last present from the verde must have gone through. Everyone in the audience shuffles uncomfortably. Nostrils flair, discreet coughs echo through the chamber. Some look at Enki, others at one another or the doorways. Enki takes a deep breath, as though he doesn’t notice a thing. “We have a saying,” he says as murmurs from his audience rise to a wave, “you can’t smell the catinga until it comes back home.” In the background, I can just make out several guards hurrying through the doors. Enki surveys his work and smiles, a sun breaking through clouds. “I hereby convene parliament.” As he saunters back to his seat, Auntie Isa rushes the podium with a handkerchief covering her nose and murder in her eyes. People stand up and hurry to the doors. They don’t know the smell will be even worse in the hallway. Our transport pods are all connected to the ventilation system. It’s meant to help refresh the air supply in the tunnels, but it can go the other direction. It can carry the fetid stink of the verde straight to the noses of people who pretend it doesn’t exist.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“Some mornings I thought I saw your worry frost our blankets, hang in the air with your cloudy breath.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“We took the road to Salvador like pilgrims and like fugitives; every step I took with the silence of the city heavy inside me felt like a prayer — to the orixás, to Christ, to my mother.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“He smiles at me; the white of his teeth catches the white of the city lights. I squint, but I won’t close my eyes. I can’t. I want to see him, forever, until I never see him again.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“He unbuttons my shirt, kisses down the lights. They’re bright enough to light up the blood in his lips. I can hardly believe the noises coming from my throat, but he’s quiet. I’m cradled in city lights; I’m floating. “I thought you wouldn’t.” I gasp as I climb over him. “I thought you didn’t want me.” I thought you didn’t love me. “I’m being selfish,” he says in his own voice. I don’t know what he means, but I can’t ask. I’m half naked against the glass. My words have broken down, my thoughts smear from my mouth like shapes, formless sounds expressing only emotion. I remember how it was with Gil: tentative, awkward, fun. I hardly recognize this as the same act.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“Gil dances like the old days, like he wants to tempt his own death.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“I look at Enki, my face wild with questions, but he just shakes his head”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“I stand. People move around me, they try to touch, but they can’t stick. Two, three, four steps and I’m less than a meter away. “June?” Enki says. I kneel. A subject to her king. I take his hand. His grip is firm and warm and dry; he smells of hibiscus and sea salt. I never really believed you would pick the Queen’s Award, he said. And he was right, in the end. “The person —” Enki puts his hand over my mouth. He looks scared. Has something else happened to the city? “Quiet.” His lips barely move.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“There’s movement in my peripheral vision, background noise that seems to hem me in, but Enki binds me like he has from the first moment I saw him, with smiles and dance and eyes that see clearly.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“I open my mouth — to scream, I think, or maybe just to cry — but he puts a careful finger on my lips. I breathe a little of his steam, and it warms me all the way through.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“a smile that always makes you feel like you’re in on a joke.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“But in this room, the real conflict threads through our spoken words, in the way Gil stiffens when Enki touches his ear, in the way Enki glances at me as if he wishes I could do something to help.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince

“But this ache that I know shouldn’t be there slides through every part of me.”
― Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince