Quotes About Summer Holidays

“The e-reading revolution may have reached our shores this year but it has yet to reckon with Australia's summer holidays. Intense sunlight plays havoc with screens and the sand invades every nook and cranny, so as convenient and sexy as your new iPad may be, the battered paperback, its pages pocked and swollen from contact with briny hands, will likely remain the beach format of choice for a few years yet.”

— Geordie Williamson

“Few institutions are considered so universally to have failed as our schools, yet in spite of this dreary record a prescription of increased dosage is making its way to the national agenda. The specifics of this proposal: a) Schools should be open year-round, avoiding long summer holidays for children. b) Schools should extend from 9 to 5, not dismissing students in mid-afternoon as is currently the case. c) Schools should provide recreation, evening meals, and a variety of family services so that working-class parents will be free of the "burden" of their own children. The bottom line of these proposals is reduction of the damaging effects of "freedom" and "family" on a subject population.”

— John Taylor Gatto

“That's the beauty of the summer holidays. It's as if life is just a big Etch-a-Sketch, and once a year you get to shake it vigorously up and down and start again.”

— Holly Smale

“Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent vanities, and irony itself
do these things go out with life? Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him?”

— Charles Lamb

“This I say is the present moment; this is the first day of the summer holidays. This is part of the emerging monster to whom we are attached.”

— Virginia Woolf

“As far as informing the headmaster, Harry had no idea where Dumbledore went during the summer holidays. He amused himself for a moment, picturing Dumbledore, with his long silver beard, full-length wizard's robes, and pointed hat, stretched out on a beach somewhere, rubbing suntan lotion onto his long crooked nose.”

— J.K. Rowling

“Yes, that would be Hermione's advice: go straight to the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and in the meantime, consult a book. Harry stared out of the window at the inky, blue-black sky. He doubted very much whether a book could help him now. As far as he knew, he was the only living person to have survived a curse like Voldemort's; it was highly unlikely, therefore, that he would find his symptoms listed in Common Magical Ailments and Afflictions. As for informing the Headmaster, Harry had no idea where Dumbledore went during the summer holidays. He amused himself for a moment, picturing Dumbledore, with his long silver beard, full-length wizard's robes and pointed hat, stretched out on a beach somewhere, rubbing suntan lotion into his long crooked nose. Wherever Dumbledore was, though, Harry was sure that Hedwig would be able to find him; Harry's owl had never yet failed to deliver a letter to anyone, even without an address. But what would he write?”

— J.K. Rowling

“Harry repressed a snort with difficulty. The Dursleys really were astonishingly stupid about their son, Dudley; they had swallowed all his dim-witted lies about having tea with a different member of his gang every night of the summer holidays. Harry knew perfectly well that Dudley had not been to tea anywhere; he and his gang spent every evening vandalizing the play park, smoking on street corners, and throwing stones at passing cars and children. Harry had seen them at it during his evening walks around Little Whinging; he had spent most of the holidays wandering the streets, scavenging newspapers from bins along the way.”

— J.K. Rowling

“It's the time of year when the literati give advice on what we should be reading on our summer holidays. These terrifying lists often leave me appalled at my own ignorance, but also suspicious about the pretension of their advocates.”

— Arthur Smith

“[ ... ] everything was going in regular caravans to the summer villas. It seemed as though Petersburg threatened to become a wilderness, so that at last I felt ashamed, mortified and sad that I had nowhere to go for the holidays and no reason to go away. I was ready to go away with every waggon, to drive off with every gentleman of respectable appearance who took a cab; but no one-absolutely no one-invited me”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“We had idyllic summer holidays, building sandcastles with my father on the beach at Bridlington. It might sound strange, but I think that secure cocoon of familial love was so nourishing, it gave me the strength to live life on my own.”

— Kiki Dee

“My father had his own business, a clothing store, which he inherited from his father. He travelled abroad frequently and was quite extravagant, so we had skiing holidays and summer holidays on the beach.”

— Britt Ekland

“I used to go swimming and passed the tennis courts every day, and that's how it started. My mum said, 'Why don't you play tennis in your summer holidays because you have nothing to do except swim for an hour or whatever?,' and that's how I started playing.”

— Sania Mirza

“Today was the first day of summer, she realized, her spirits lifting like a kite. She loved milestones of any sort: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, checks on the calendar, notches on a growth chart. Today would be special, brand new. She felt it deep inside. Summer was here with sunny days and balmy nights, the informality of barbecues and dips in the swimming pool. She was so relieved to have the grind of the school year finished. She missed playing with her children.”

— Mary Alice Monroe

“As a child, I used to spend nearly all my summer holidays with my aunt in Wales, and we used to catch mackerel in a boat and then cook them on board.”

— Mary Quant

“For many years I enjoyed the pleasure of cruising on my yacht all summer long and these were my best holidays. In mid-May, we'd start in St Tropez. I'd collect my bikinis from my home there and then we'd go up to Cannes for the Film Festival, on to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix and then to Italy.”

— Ivana Trump

“I was 13 - 14 when I first tasted stardom. In the summer holidays, my dad made me act in these films that went on to become superhits. I became a child star.”

— Mahesh Babu

“I have been to Turkey almost every summer holiday of my life and pretty much only on summer holidays, which makes me a very shallow Turk indeed.”

— Joseph O'Neill

“My husband and I have enjoyed many summer holidays on the Continent, and many people say that their most memorable trips have been the journeys made on the spur of the moment.”

— Margaret Beckett

“Nothing has ever touched on what fun childhood was. Summer holidays were bliss. We made home movies, with real stories in them. My father had such charm and charisma, and made everything so funny.”

— Jane Birkin

“As a kid, I would get my parents to drop me off at my local library on their way to work during the summer holidays, and I would walk home at night. For several years, I read the children's library until I finished the children's library. Then I moved into the adult library and slowly worked my way through them.”

— Neil Gaiman

“July had come, and haying begun; the little gardens were doing finely and the long summer days were full of pleasant hours. The house stood open from morning till night, and the lads lived out of doors, except at school time. The lessons were short, and there were many holidays, for the Bhaers believed in cultivating healthy bodies by much exercise, and our short summers are best used in out-of-door work. Such a rosy, sunburnt, hearty set as the boys became; such appetites as they had; such sturdy arms and legs, as outgrew jackets and trousers; such laughing and racing all over the place; such antics in house and barn; such adventures in the tramps over hill and dale; and such satisfaction in the hearts of the worthy Bhaers, as they saw their flock prospering in mind and body, I cannot begin to describe.”

— Louisa May Alcott

“Dad and I leave town in the early dark. It's the second Sunday of the holidays, and we pack up the old blue car with enough clothes for summer and hit the road. It's so early he's wiping hills of sand piled in the corners of his eyes. I wipe a few tears from mine. Tears don't pile, though. They grip and cling and slide in salty trails that I taste until the edge of the city.”

— Cath Crowley

“They walked to school, talking about how much they were longing for the summer holidays.
"Oh, I am planning things," said Jamie. "Great, great things. I could join a band."
"You gave up the guitar after two lessons."
"Well," he said, "I could be a backup dancer."
"Backup dancers have to wear belly shirts and glitter," said Mae. "So obviously, I support this plan.”

— Sarah Rees Brennan

“During the school holidays he would approach the bookcase in the pink room and stand before it, his hand alighting on this or that volume with the arbitrariness of a moth, half deciding on something before sliding it back in place and moving on, as though experimenting with the keys of a piano, all briefly opened books eager to engage his eye, each flickeringly glimpsed paragraph enticing him hurriedly with its secret, and having made his choice he would drift through the house in search of the coolest spot to read through the long summer afternoons that had a touch of eternity to them, altering the arrangement of his limbs as much for comfort as for fear that his undisturbed shadows would leave a stain on the wall.”

— Nadeem Aslam

“Only a few more weeks till spring ... and a few more weeks then till summer ... and holidays ... and Green Gables ... and golden sunlight on Avonlea meadows ... and a gulf that will be silver at dawn and sapphire at noon and crimson at sunset ... and you.”

— L.M. Montgomery

“I've always been in love with the States. When I was a kid, we would take these long summer holidays in Texas, Nashville, and all over. I fell in love with the people, the food, even the smell.”

— Ed Weeks

“To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months' summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect. My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning.”

— Bel Kaufman

“Nobody likes being criticised, particularly by players who will be in Disneyland this summer on their holidays rather than the World Cup in Japan”

— Phil Thompson

“Summer, with its dog days, its vacations, its distractions, is over. We have had our holidays, our rest, our recreation. The fall season, with its new opportunities for effort, enterprise and achievement, is upon us. Let us rip off our coats and get down to business. We may have allowed pessimism to grip us during the summer months. We may even have allowed laziness to enter our bones. Now it is up to us to throw off both lassitude and pessimism. The time has come for action, for aggressiveness ...”

— B.C. Forbes

“My nan used to look after me in the summer holidays and she had a cat with one eye. It used to walk into walls and tables. I used to think it was hilarious. It was a slapstick cat.”

— Noel Fielding

“I could be a school teacher and be rich. It has nothing to do with your money; it has to do with your knowledge. If I was a school teacher, I would be ten times richer because I have more time off! They get the summer off, holidays off, weekends off.”

— Robert Kiyosaki