Summerlost Quotes

“My dad used to say that life was like turning the pages in a book. 'Oh, look,' he'd say, pretending to flip the pages in the air after we'd had something bad happen to us. 'Bad luck here on page ninety-seven. And on ninety-eight. But something good here on ninety-nine! All you had to do was keep reading!”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“I understood why Leo called the fountain Baby Niagara. Because once you see something big, you can't help seeing it in everything small.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“You don't have to know someone all the way to miss them. Or to feel bad when they're gone" -Leo”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“I have been in the presence of a lot of greatness. And people I love who loved me back. It might be the same thing.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“The night was shadows and wind and the smell of a storm on the way, a night for crying until the tears were gone but the ache was left. A night for imagining that you could step out onto the windowsill and say hello to the dark, say I am sad and have the wind say I know. You could say I am alive and the trees would sigh back We are too. You could whisper I am alone and everything ends and the stars in the sky would answer We understand. Or maybe it’s ghosts telling you all these things, saying We know, we’re alone too, we understand how everything and nothing ends.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“She was in the right place at the right time last night, safe inside when the tree came down.
One thing different—an extra piece of sandpaper outside when she needed it, the tree falling a bit sooner—and she would be gone. One thing different—hitting a red light instead of a green one on the way to the freeway, choosing another errand to run that day—and my dad and Ben would still be here.
It’s not right that something so big, your entire life, depends on a million tiny things.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“I couldn’t tell anyone.
I never, ever wanted Ben to be dead.
But sometimes I wanted him gone.
And then he was.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“As we came out of the hallway, I pretended that the whole world had secret tunnels, where people could walk straight to wherever they really wanted to be and ignore all the meanness in the middle.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“A minute ago you told me that you thought I was cute.”
“Yeah,” Leo said. “I mean, I do think that. But you’re not my girlfriend. You’re my person.”
I knew right away what he meant.
I thought he was cute and he thought I was cute but it was different than it was when people have crushes.
With Leo I’d fallen into another kind of like. I couldn’t wait to tell him stuff and I loved hearing him laugh at my jokes and I loved laughing at his jokes. He made me feel like I had a spot in the world.
It felt as if Leo and I could like each other all our lives.
So I hugged him.
He was my person too.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“The end is what people talk about. How they died.
Why does the end always have to be what people talk about? Think about?
Because it’s the last thing we knew of you. And it breaks our hearts because we can picture it. We don’t want to, and we know we might get it wrong, but we do. We can’t stop. Those last moments keep coming to our minds, awake, asleep.
At the end, everyone is alone.
You were alone.
But other times you were not.
You clomped around onstage, your face red with embarrassment, your knees knobby in your cargo shorts, and you looked back at your wife and kids who laughed and cheered.
You rolled down a hill. You had been crying but now you smiled. There was grass on the back of your shirt and in your hair and your eyes were bright. I put my arms around you.
Your last moment was the worst moment, but you had other moments.
And people were with you for some of them.
I was with you for some of them.
There were times when we were all, all around you.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“...once you see something big, you can't help seeing it in everything small”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“My dad used to say that life was like turning the pages in a book. "Oh, look," he'd say, pretending to flip the pages in the air after we'd had something bad happen to us. "Bad luck here on page ninety-seven. And on ninety-eight. But something good here on ninety-nine! All you had to do was keep reading!”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“This summer I’d been spending a lot of time on other people’s deaths. Harley’s. Lisette’s. But somehow it had helped me feel alive. Because they weren’t my deaths. The ones that were my own were too hard to face.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“Leo didn’t laugh.
He also didn’t cry. Which it looked for a minute like he might do. I knew that feeling. Hold your mouth tight, tell your heart not to hurt, tell your brain not to think about what might happen next.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“I am different and that has nothing to do with you, I wanted to tell him. Leo is different and that has nothing to do with you. You look at us and you don’t like us and you don’t even know why. I’ve seen it before a million times with Ben.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“I watched Leo and I realized that he also knew how it felt to be different. To want big things in a very small town. To get made fun of. He wasn’t as different as I was. But he also wasn’t one of those lucky people who fit in all the time. And I thought of the first time I worked with him, what I’d seen. He did like the world—that was the thing about him that I liked the best—but the world didn’t always like him back.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“And I guess that was right, but it also seemed to me like people who said Ben was special and had no worries were as wrong as the people long ago, but in a different way.
Because that’s crappy. What if this life was all Ben got? People said he was sweet and special—and he was—but he was also sad and angry. More than most people. He cried. His own body seemed to feel weird to him sometimes—he would jump and move like he wanted to be free of his skin. I could see him looking at us like Get me out of here and we were never sure where to take him. You can’t take someone away from their own body. And that seemed unfair. Would God really do that to someone so other people could feel like they were learning important lessons in the few minutes they spent with him?”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“But he knew I wouldn't do that. He knew I wouldn't ask Mom for anything I didn't really, really need. We both tried to be good for her and she tried to be patient with us. Sometimes I thought of the three of us as pencils with the erasers scrubbed down to the end, and the next swipe across the paper would tear through the page and make a scree sound across the desk.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“I want a good way to remember, I wanted to say to Meg. I want to stop crying. I want everything in the world to stop breaking my heart.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“For a minute I thought he was going to turn around and leave. Not even watch Times of Our Seasons. Then I saw him take a deep breath and do that thing. You see grown-ups do it all the time. They’re about to lose their patience or get mad and then instead they take a deep breath and do not lose their patience and do not scream.
It’s a weird thing to see a little kid do. I used to see Ben do it and it tore me up.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“They’ll leave you alone if you walk away,” I said. “You have to ignore them.”
“You sound like my parents.” Leo sounded mad. “Like every teacher ever. That doesn’t work. You can’t walk away every time they bother you. Sometimes there’s nowhere to go.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“I don’t know what Miles thought about while we walked home but I thought about Leo. I guess I was wrong about him fitting in with his family. And I should have realized that he would fit in because that’s one thing I do know for sure. That it is possible to be different and still belong to your family. For them to love you like crazy.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“We liked our grandparents. We liked our uncle and our aunt. They had known our dad and our brother Ben. They had some of the same memories we did. Sometimes they even brought things up, like, “Remember when your dad went out in the kayak at Aspen Lake and he flipped over and we had to save him in our paddleboat?” and we would all start laughing because we had the same picture in our minds, my dad with his sunglasses dangling from one ear and his hair all wet. And they knew that Ben’s favorite kind of ice cream wasn’t ice cream at all, it was rainbow sherbet, and he always ate green first, and so when I saw it in my grandma’s freezer once and I started crying they didn’t even ask why and I think I saw my uncle Nick, my mom’s brother, crying too.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“I admitted it to myself.
I had all kinds of dreams. I wanted to go skiing again and get fast and good. I wanted to go to London too someday. I wanted to fall in love.i wanted to own a bookstore or a restraunt and have people come in and say, "Hi, Cedar," and I wanted from ride a bike down the streets in a little town in a country where people spoke a different language. Maybe my bike would a basket and maybe the basket would have flowers in it. I wanted to live in a big city and wear lipstick and my hair in bun and buy groceries and carry them home in a paper bag. My high heels would click when I climbed the stairs to my apartment. I wanted to stand at the edge of a lake and listen.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“I didn’t point out that I’m part Chinese-American and so the odds that I would have been in England back in Shakespeare’s time were highly unlikely. “And,”
― Ally Condie, SNEAK PEEK: Summerlost

“You're not my girlfriend. You're my person."
I knew right away what he meant.
I thought he was cute and he though ti was cute but was different than it was when people have crushes.
With Leo I'd fallen into another kind of like. I couldn't wait to tell him stuff and I loved hearing him laugh at my jokes and I loved laughing at his jokes. He made me feel like I had a spot in the world.
It felt as if Leo and I could like each other all our lives.
So I hugged him.
He was my person too.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“My dad used to say that life was like turning the pages in a book. “Oh, look,” he’d say, pretending to flip the pages in the air after we’d had something bad happen to us. “Bad luck here on page ninety-seven. And on ninety-eight. But something good here on ninety-nine! All you had to do was keep reading!”
― Ally Condie, SNEAK PEEK: Summerlost

“After Lunch I sat outside and I saw the boy on the bike ride by again, and he didn't see me that time either. And he still had on the same clothes and he still looked happy.
Next day, same thing all over again. Boy, bike, clothes, happy.
In my family we never call people names because sometimes people used to call Ben names and we all hated that. When he was younger he didn't notice so much, but when he was nine, the year he died, he noticed every single time. You'd see his eyes flicker. He'd take it in. And then who knew what he'd do with it. Or how it made him feel.
Here is something bad about me.
I call people names in my head sometimes.
I don't do it to be mean.
I do it to label.
But I know names-to-label are bad too. Names-to-be-mean are worse, but both are bad.
Here's the name I called the boy in my head:
Nerd-on-a-Bike.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“I looked at the things again. Screwdriver, purple toothbrush, map. I thought about how Leo had helped me get a job and how he let us watch Times of Our Seasons at his house every day and how he listened whenever I talked about Ben and my dad but also didn’t expect me to talk about Ben or my dad and how Leo always shared the lollipops from the bank with me. (And now I’d given him one back.) How he’d shown me The Tempest with Lisette Chamberlain as Miranda. How he’d completely understood when I’d cried after I’d seen it.
And a thought came to my mind. Even though I’d only known him for part of a summer.
Leo Bishop might be the best friend I’d ever had.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost

“And then I got it. Leo wanted to go so badly because he wanted not only to be in the presence of greatness, but because he wanted to share something he thought was amazing with his dad.”
― Ally Condie, Summerlost