The Last Summer (of You and Me) Quotes

“She didn't deserve it, which was to say she deserved better.”

“A lifetime of planning could be canceled in less than five minutes, it turned out.”

“The chief frustration of romantic love was that you couldn't make it go by yourself.”

“Her mother was always looking for confirmation that Riley was gay and also for proof that she wasn't.”

“The one thing Alice knew was that she deserved neither pleasure nor comfort. She would mess up her heart, too.”

“She couldn't picture his face when he was gone. Every summer he came back wearing his same face that she could not remember.”

“Riley made it seem like they were all gods of their world, but Alice know that Riley was really the god. She just gave them turns sometimes.”

“If Riley wanted to run, Alice couldn't stop her. All she could do was watch. So she did. She watched and remembered, and it made for a strangely beautiful vision.”

“What was the matter with her? It was just him! It was the same old Paul. But it also wasn't. He was the strangest of strangers in that he was also her oldest friend.”

“Her surprise was physical. She was astonished, and at the same time she knew. There were many things in life like that. You couldn't imagine it, and then it happened and you couldn't really imagine it hadn't.”

“Alice felt disloyal to Riley when she began to realize, much later, that her natural talents, her ability to communicate and observe, her caution, her empathy, her love of knitting, suited her better to the grown-up world.”

“"So, are you writing or erasing?" she asked.
"Writing. I erase by night."
She looked at him carefully. He indicated no knowledge of what had gone on at the beach the night before. "I think you erase by day, too," she said.”

“Her singleness of mind, her peculiar innocence was unchanged, even in spite of everything. We can't take you with us, and we can't leave you. He realized this was true before they knew there was anything wrong with her heart.”

“Cars were conveyors of privacy. Without them, you lived a lot more of your life out in the open. Where you went, who you went with. Who you waited for at the ferry dock. Who you brushed your hair for. You were exposed here, but you were also safe.”

“Maybe they would be the first couple to achieve career success while having sex. They couldn't really teach classes or go to meetings, but maybe they could do conference calls. That lawyer route would be out of the question, which was all the better.”

“Would her hair have gotten as dark as that? Could her shape have changed into that? No and no, obviously. At this distance, closing in at this speed, you knew a person by her posture, by certain unnameable qualities, and those weren't and couldn't be hers.”

“She wanted to see him, but she was afraid to. She wanted to keep her version of events for as long as possible. She didn't want to give him a chance to remember it all differently, to tuck it away in a package that was easier to seal off and easier to forget.”

“It brought to mind the problem of babysitting for the children of family friends. They underpaid you because they felt they bestowed a favor by recognizing you as something other than a child yourself. Friends and favors made a mess of commerce, in Alice's opinion.”

“Riley had been her best self with Paul. She had spent her happiest times with him. If she could stay the same in Paul's mind, then her real self was preserved, it existed in one place at least. When she was with him, even now, she could feel like that person she'd been before.”

“She'd been so angry with him when she'd fallen asleep the night before, and now his lovely body was all around her, and the anger was nowhere to be found. With Paul, she could never remember where she'd mislaid her anger, even the times she promised herself she would go back and look for it later.”