Ann Brashares Quotes

When I look back on my childhood, my fondest memories are those surrounding the dinner table.

To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - this is happiness.

Some of my earliest memories are dancing in the kitchen, standing on my mom's toes.

Having the family around is always very important because they are supportive. If you have a good day, you can enjoy it together. And if you have a bad day, you always find something as a distraction with your children, because they are normally happy.

Stormy skies, says Ernesto. He grieved for them. Summer rain. Childhood.

The things that you did with parents, whether it was spending every Sunday morning with your dad and eating French toast and watching Popeye, or decorating the Christmas tree with our mother - these are memories that help you be happy.

We always spend the summer together. My wife and kids, we always go back to Massachusetts and spend the summer there near where my wife and I both grew up. I wasn't willing to sacrifice the summer to go elsewhere.

The menus that remain, for me, are really the menus that you have with your good friends, with your wife, with your mother, with your kids. These are what stay in your mind.

I try to make a lot of time for friends and family because I think that's really important and for pleasurable experiences.

Family time is the best time.

When you do something that people watch and enjoy as children, that's great because it stays with you, throughout your life. The things you loved as a child stay with you, and so do the people who were in those things.

I remember once walking out hand in hand with a boy I knew, and it was summer, and suddenly before us was a field of gold. Gold as far as you could see. We knew we'd be rich forever. We filled our pockets and our hair. We were rolled in gold. We ran through the field laughing and our legs and feet were coated in yellow dust, so that we were like golden statues or golden gods. He kissed my feet, the boy I was with, and when he smiled, he had a gold tooth. It was only a field of buttercups, but we were young.

Come clean with a child heart Laugh as peaches in the summer wind Let rain on a house roof be a song Let the writing on your face be a smell of apple orchards on late June.

If I had Aladdin's lamp and the usual three wishes, the first would always be, 'Give me the first day of June.

In this family, we always celebrate each other's birthdays. I don't care if you're four or fourteen or forty and scattered around the world. We gotta stick by each other, okay? And meals- as long as you live under the same roof, you have at least one meal a day together. I don't care if it's a dreaded hot dog in front of the dastardly TV as long as you're all there. -Maeve Bennett

I'm happy when things are just kind of calm. I love going to the ocean. I love driving. I love going to shows. Just being with people I really have fun with. I love the summer. I'm happy in the summer. Love hot, hot weather. I'm happy when I'm making a record, most of the time.

In time, the hurt began to fade and it was easier to just let it go. At least I thought it was. But in every boy I met in the next few years, I found myself looking for you, and when the feelings got too strong, I'd write you another letter. But I never sent them for fear of what I might find. By then, you'd gone on with your life and I didn't want to think about you loving someone else. I wanted to remember us like we were that summer. I didn't ever want to lose that.

When I remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it seems that in those days I ate my lunches, smelled another's skin, noticed a shade of yellow, even simply sat, with greater lust and hopefulness - and that I lusted with greater faith, hoped with greater abandon. The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments. No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything.

Salt is added to dried rose petals with the perfume and spices, when we store them away in covered jars, the summers of our past.

I'd be happy with this summer if it's all we ever had.

While we're young and beautiful, living free and easy. Here without a worry, dancing in our bare feet because when the summer's done we might not be so young and beautiful.

He was a worshiper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote these words: 'For Justice all place a temple, and all season, summer.' He believed that happiness is the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest. He added to the sum of human joy; and were every one to whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep tonight beneath a wilderness of flowers. . . .

A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.

All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world.