The Summer We Lost Alice Quotes

“Life goes on, even when you think it can't. Even when you don't especially want it to.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“Old post cards, tin wind-up toys with rusted gears, buttons long out of fashion, ticket stubs found in a shoebox in the attic—these are the things Alice likes, not new stuff that comes sealed in plastic.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“Little tape recorders, that's what kids are, Cat thought. If you want to find out what your husband is saying behind your back, play Barbie with your daughter.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“She couldn't see the mathematical beauty in a leaf, the miracle in a seed that becomes a seedling, the absolute wonder that is the earth and the sea and the sky. He would try to talk to her of these things and receive only dismissive comments in reply. He learned from her to keep his mouth shut.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“You were a child, you didn't mean to hurt my feelings. Children are ignorant. It takes an adult to choose to be cruel.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“Never mind being first. If you want to count for something, be the last of your kind.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“The evening air smelled like secrets. The breeze that stirred his hair had been places Matt could only imagine. It had twined through trees and ushered clouds and whistled through caves. It had slid on its belly over desert sands and swirled snow on mountaintops. It had ruffled the feathers of baby eagles and extinguished the matches of sailors far out to sea. It had stolen balloons and floated bubbles. It was timeless. It had swept dust off the backs of dinosaurs, filled the lungs of pharaohs, and it would abrade the bones of the last human to fall on some distant, devastated plain. But tonight it was here, in this little town, fluttering curtains, rattling blinds, and caressing the face of a ten-year-old boy with a troubled mind.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“Things aren't what they seem. What a truth to learn at such a tender age! More discouraging was the way in which everyone around him—his parents in particular—seemed so certain of what was and what wasn't. They were intent on his learning what they knew, but they knew nothing, nothing that was in any way important. They knew what they could see and hear and touch, but they didn't know anything about what lay on the other side of their neat, self-contained reality. They didn't know how that other world could impose itself on their own and steal all that was precious, leaving only a black absence that itself was something palpable and other-than-real.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“I see the life draining out of her and something else taking its place, but I don't know what. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe nothing is taking its place.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“Now I understand. Alice is afraid. The whole town is afraid because the world doesn't make sense to them anymore. Two kids go missing and suddenly everything is all messed up.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“Alice twists a lock of her hair as she sucks on her straw and swivels back and forth on her seat. The shush of the ball bearings sounds like the sea to her, like waves retreating through the sand. She is a thousand miles away. I know this, but I'm not going to let her know I know.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“Alice likes to swing as high as she can. At the schoolyard on the big swings there, I think maybe she's going to go all the way over the top. I can read her mind when she swings. I know she's thinking about jumping out and flying away when she swings that high. Flying to California. She doesn't say anything about it.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice

“Aunt Flo's love is not a soft thing, I think, but something hard and unyielding, which can be good or bad.”
― Jan Strnad, The Summer We Lost Alice