The Summer of Chasing Mermaids Quotes

“When one dream burns to ash, you don't crumble beneath it. You get on your hands and knees, and you sift through those ashes until you find the very last ember, the very last spark. Then you breathe. You breathe. You fucking breathe. And you make a new fire.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“Love didn't save me; it changed me. Changed me into someone who could save myself.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“It was one thing to have your own kind of hope, an ember you could nurture inside, something to inspire you when things got dark. If it died, it was on you; no one else even had to know about it, and you were free to reignite it, or to give up and walk away. But when you were carrying it with another person, for another person, it was a dangerous dream. Treacherous as the sea, yet fragile as a bubble.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“Sometimes love was a tonic. Sometimes it was a weapon. And so often it was nearly impossible to tell the difference”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“The girl who'd written volumes on the walls but never said a word.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“plan B
plan Battered and Broken
plan Boxed in
plan Bailed on and Back from the dead
plan Better luck next time
plan Balled up
plan Backtracked
plan Backhanded
plan Backward steps
plan Blackballed, Black-marked, and Blacklisted
plan B-side, Bye Bye Baby
plan Belly up and Beat down
plan Bad days ahead and Best are far Behind”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“This boy wore the ocean in his eyes, green-gray-blue, ever shifting, and I recognized him immediately. Knew before he said another word that he was as dangerous as he was beautiful.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“You can't put a condom on your heart.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“There were lots of ways to lose your voice.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“Yes. I was just telling Elyse here... frankly, kids, I'm not sure it's even legal to have a female first mate. We'd have to consult the rule book, but as far as I know, regatta's a man's race."

Christian's jaw ticked, just like it had with his father the night of the party. "Damn. Must have hit my head on the way out of that time machine. 1850, are we? I might need some new clothes. Elyse, you sew right? Don't all girls sew?”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“I'm sorry. For all of us. Sorry for all the little ways the people who were supposed to love us most could hurt us so deeply, despite their shared heritage and blood, as thought their knowledge of our pasts gave them unlimited access to all the most tender places, the old wounds that could be so easily reopened with no more than a glance, a comment, a passing reminder of all the ways in which we failed to live up to their expectations.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“It takes a strong woman to lose everything, then stand naked in front of the mirror and face herself again. You need time, honey. And I don't mean time for it to go away. I mean time to learn how to live with it. This is a pain you'll always carry.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“What they hadn't talked about was betrayal. How something you'd known and loved forever could turn on you, could break your heart even as it left you alive.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“It was a card, stamped with a mermaid in the center, colored and adorned with glittery starfish stickers and hand-drawn reeds in green and yellow. Inside, edged along the bottom in blue-green waves and encircled with a heart, he'd written a note:

Dear Elyse,
Thank you for being my new friend.
And liking mermaids.
And marrying my brother.
Your new friend,
Sebastian Kane
P.S. Are you a mermaid? Yes or No.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“All the people who'd brought me here, past and present, ancient and young, legend and life and lore, I channeled. I welcomed them into my infinite heart, alongside the ghosts, the shadows, the ache I'd always carry. I made their strength mine, a part of me. My inspiration. My voice.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“Sometimes life's most important moments are quiet, a decision made quick and calm.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“His pink fingers found the shell around my neck, touched it softly. He lifted it and saw the scar. His brow furrowed.

He whispered, "Is your voice inside the shell?"

I smiled a little sadly.

"That's okay," he said. "We don't have to talk to be friends.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“Not everybody gets a happy ending, however deserved it may be. Life had been doing its damnedest to teach me that, starting with my first saltwater breath, the day my mother died at sea.

But that didn't mean we were giving up.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“Beneath the vast diamond sky, I felt both all important and utterly significant, the goddess and the damned in equal measure.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“There's peace in acceptance. Death in it, always. Inevitable. With the acceptance of one thing comes the dying of another: a new belief, a relationship. An ideal, a plan, a what-if. Assumptions. A path. A song.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“Not so long ago I'd been convinced that losing my voice was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, the worst tragedy. But since then I'd been losing my whole self, everything I stood for, believed in, felt. Everything I ever wanted to be. Everything I ever was.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“Ink and paper were the only place where my voice didn’t falter, didn’t betray the real me.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“Rules are rules, yet still
trumped always by kindness and human decency.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“I thought of Atargatis, the First, frightening and beautiful. The mermaid goddess who lived on in the soul of every woman who'd ever fallen in love with the ocean.

I thought of Sebastian, my little mermaid queen, how happy he was the day of the parade, just getting the chance to express himself, to be himself.

I thought of Vanessa, the story about how she and her girlfriends became feminist killjoys to get a women's literature core in their school, the way she'd accepted me this summer without question, gently pushed me out of my self-imposed shell. Of her mother, Mrs. James, how she'd grabbed that bullhorn at the parade and paved the way for Sebastian's joy.

I thought of Lemon, so wise, so comfortable in her own skin, full of enough love to raise a daughter as a single mom and still have room for me, for her friends, for everyone whose lives she touched with her art.

I thought of Kirby, her fierce loyalty, her patience and grace, her energy, what a good friend and sister she'd become, even when I'd tried to shut her out. I thought of all the new things I wanted to share with her now, all the things I hoped she'd share with me.

I thought of my mother, a woman I'd never known, but one whose ultimate sacrifice gave me life.

I thought of Granna, stepping in to raise her six granddaughters when my mom died, never once making us feel like a burden or a curse. She'd managed the cocoa estate with her son, personally saw to the comforts of every resort guest, and still had time to tell us bedtime stories, always reminding us how much she treasured us.

I thought of my sisters. Juliette, Martine, and Hazel, their adventures to faraway lands, new experiences. Gabrielle with her island-hopping, her ultimate choice to follow her heart home.

And Natalie, my twin. My mirror image, my dream sharer. I knew I hadn't been fair to her this summer—she'd saved my life, done the best she could. And I wanted to thank her for that, because as long as it had taken me to realize it, I was thankful. Thankful for her. Thankful to be alive. To breathe.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“This is mine, I thought. Music. Rhythm. The intense rush that came from connecting with something so deeply, so right. No matter that I couldn't sing. I could breathe. I could dance. I could move. The music was still in me. It always would be.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“I felt the loss of my voice like a fresh wound, a cold blade against my throat, and I closed my eyes to keep the sea from spilling down my cheeks. No one knew me like my family in Tobago, but they’d known me always as Elyse, beautiful songbird, weaver of music that could bring a man to his knees. Music was my life, a rare gift that Natalie and I had shared, had grown into, had grown because of.
And now, without the music, I was just . . . Elyse. Broken.
My family didn’t know me anymore. Natalie didn’t know me. I didn’t know me.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“When you don’t feel like talking, no one can force you, no matter how many stories and secrets might be locked inside.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“There were tears in his eyes. The ocean rose inside him, and I looked away, before it got me, too.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“Crying never brought anything back from the dead. It only felt like the ocean trying to drown you from the inside out.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids

“But death isn’t an ending, Elyse. Just part of a longer journey. Death begets life, remember. One does not exist without the other.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Summer of Chasing Mermaids