“If it is possible to be happy in the middle of a nightmare, then Topthorn and I were happy that summer.”

“We were happy. I know I ought to be able to tell you about it, yet I cannot, for while a nightmare will stay with you like hunger, when you awake from a happy dream, you have no memory of it.”

“The point is not that my life is one long golden summer which I am simply too self-absorbed to appreciate (although it might be, of course, and I am simply too self-absorbed to appreciate it), but that happy moments are possible, and while happy moments are possible I have no right to demand anything more for myself, given the havoc that would be wrought.”

“In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.”

“We're not afraid of the dark. Our nightmares were born on sultry, summer afternoons.”

“I know that whatever you decide, you’ll be happy, Summer, and that is the only thing I could ever wish. Whatever happens in the rest of this summer, whatever happens the rest of your life, it’s important that you are happy, and stay that way. – Aunt Sookie”