The Summer We Lost Alice
Jan Strnad
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Life goes on, even when you think it can't. Even when you don't especially want it to.”
“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.”
“You were a child, you didn't mean to hurt my feelings. Children are ignorant. It takes an adult to choose to be cruel.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Never mind being first. If you want to count for something, be the last of your kind.”
“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.”
“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.”
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Book Keywords:
life-goes-on, kids, funny, old-soul, barbies
