Summer People Quotes
"Beth wanted plush towels; she took comfort now wherever she could find it."
"It was the new way she evaluated her day: On a good day she cried only twice, in the morning shower and before her Valium kicked in at night."
"A whole life lived and all Winnie would be left with were snippets, a box of snapshots."
"Your father invited him for a reason," Beth said, though Garrett could tell even she wasn’t sure what the reason was.
"But he wouldn’t admit it in front of her mother or her sister. She’s not brave enough. She’s not brave at all."
"Her father so engrossed in the front-page story that he held his hand up for quiet when Beth asked him what his schedule looked like that day."
"Marcus thought he might be experiencing some kind of reverse claustrophobia."
"As if there were anything else to think about."
"But there was something else. Winnie and his mother fighting over who got to make Marcus’s sandwich, for starters."
"Sitting on a deserted beach in the hot sun—no bugs, no trash, no other people kicking sand onto his blanket or blaring Top 40 stations on the boom box like at Jones Beach—and he could swim in the cool water whenever he wanted."
"She’d devoted so many hours to studying it when she was younger."
"It was as if she were entered in a sandwich-making contest."
"He was proud of himself because he understood not only what Garrett was saying, but what he hadn’t said."
"I have no idea," Garrett said, though he had every idea.
"It’s a letter from Constance," Beth said. "It can’t wait."
"My mother is a murderer, Winnie. She killed a third grader. Do you hear what I’m telling you?"
"I’d die if I got grounded and couldn’t see you."
"You were supposed to meet us at Ego’s on Tuesday."
"Every man, woman, and child is entitled to one secret."
"We’re here," Piper announced to the party in general.
"I never thought I’d say this," he said. "But you were a lucky man."
"If you want details of someone’s sex life, get your own."
"I’m not getting out until Marcus tells me what the hell he’s doing in your bedroom."
"This is the hardest summer any of us will ever have."
"But maybe not—because here were her twins, each experiencing love for the first time."
"Beth laughed. She remembered wanting to open the champagne."
"Beth never actually said yes, but she never said no either."
"I’m back," she said brightly, as though she’d just returned from a semester abroad.
"You’ve been with David, haven’t you?" her mother said.
"It’s a human being," Winnie insisted.
9179812
9179812
"But instead he felt a profound sadness—his mother had ruined her life."
"You don’t have to forgive, you don’t have to understand. All he had to do was show up."
"She would be tempted to give him news... but then she realized that she would do what Marcus was now doing: telling his mother he loved her."
"I would have known you anywhere. You look just like your father."
"I’ve lived with this decision every day for the last nine months."
"These had been there all along—they hadn’t been installed to torment him—and yet he never remembered seeing one before."
"He didn’t want to be whispered about; he didn’t want the information fermenting his teachers’ opinion of him as they wrote his college recommendations."
"It hurt him in a way he couldn’t name. It was worse than heartbreak. It was worse, in a way, than losing his father."
9179812
9179812