35 Inspirational Summer Reading Quotes for Literary Buffs

Discover summer reading quotes that explore the warmth and relaxation of the season. There are great quotes by authors that exquisitely capture what this lively season is about. Use them on social media or just enjoy reading beautifully strung seasonal sentiments. Keep reading to feel inspired to have the perfect summer this year.

“Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.” – Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty

“June, the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.” – Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy-Tacy & Tib

“Early June, the world of leaf and blade and flowers explode and every sunset is different.” – John Steinbeck, The Winter Of Our Discontent

“I wondered what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.” – L.M Montgomery, Anne of The Island

“Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.” –  Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.” – William Shakespeare, Sonnet XVIII

“The summer night is like a perfection of thought.” – Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

“I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry, and I see summer – its dust and lowering skies.” – Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“Summer lasted forever when I was seven, but now it only visits.” – Sonya Hartnett, Thursday’s Child

“I will always seek to make it summer for you.” – Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves

“Summer has filled her veins with light and her heart is washed with noon.” – C. Day Lewis, Overtures to Death and Other Poems

“Life, now, was unfolding before me, constantly and visibly, like the flowers of summer that drop fanlike petals on eternal soil.” – Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

“Rejoice as summer should…chase away sorrows by living.” – Melissa Marr, Darkest Mercy

“May summer last a hundred years.” – Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

“There was so much time that marvelous summer. Day after day, mist rose from the meadow as the sky lightened and hedges, barns and woods took shape until, at last, the long curving back of the hills lifted away from the Plain. It was a sort of stage-magic.” – J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.” – Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

“The castle grounds were gleaming in the sunlight as though freshly painted; the cloudless sky smiled at itself in the smoothly sparkly lake, the satin-green lawns rippled occasionally in a gentle breeze: June had arrived.” – J.K Rowling, Harry Potter & The Order of The Phoenix

“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.” – Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird

“Summer, after all, is a time when wonderful things can happen to quiet people. For those few months, you’re not required to be who everyone thinks you are, and that cut-grass smell in the air and the chance to dive into the deep end of a pool give you a courage you don’t have the rest of the year. You can be grateful and easy, with no eyes on you, and no past. Summer just opens the door and lets you out.” – Deb Caletti, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

“It was dry, and yet warm with the head of the summer day. I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge. The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze whispered. Nature seemed to me benign and good: I thought she loved me.” – Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre 

“Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.” – Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“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.” – L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams

“Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope.” – Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” –  John Lubbock, The Use of Life

“In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible.” – Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride

“Overhead hung a summer sky furrowed with the rush of rockets; and from the east a late moon, pushing up beyond the lofty bend of the coast, sent across the bay a shaft of brightness which paled to ashes in the red glitter of the illuminated boats.” – Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“The summer stretched out the daylight as if on a rack. Each moment was drawn out until its anatomy collapsed. Time broke down. The day progressed in an endless sequence of dead moments.” – China Miéville, Perdido Street Station

“It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendor of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods.” – L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

“The sun shone with all the gaiety and promise of early summer. The new green leaves glistened with it, and the apple and pear blossoms, just past their prime, drifted in the warm air like white butterflies, powdering the orchard floor with their bruised petals.” –  Louisa Morgan, The Age of Witches

“There was nothing like a Saturday – unless it was the Saturday leading up to the last week of school and into summer vacation. That of course was all the Saturdays of your life rolled into one big shiny ball.” –  Nora Roberts, Rising Tides

“The beauty of that June day was almost staggering. After the wet spring, everything that could turn green had outdone itself in greenness and everything that could even dream of blooming or blossoming was in bloom and blossom. The sunlight was a benediction. The breezes were so caressingly soft and intimate on the skin as to be embarrassing.” – Dan Simmons, Drood

“The summer night was settling upon the neighborhood like a dark lace veil, casting dappled shadows on the roofs and sidewalks and lawns.” – Herman Raucher, Summer of ’42