As we relish the last month of summer, I wanted to take a moment to pause and reflect on this glorious season. We might not be traveling this year or partaking in favorite traditions, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate summertime and the joy it brings. I am a book-lover and often become inspired by literary quotes. To share my interest and joy, here are a few sunshine-filled excerpts from beloved stories.

1. “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. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.” — Natalie Babbitt, “Tuck Everlasting”

2. “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”

3. “And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby”

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

5. “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”

6. “The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year — the days when summer is changing into autumn — the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.” — E.B. White, “Charlotte’s Web”

7. “Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. 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”

8. “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”

Danielle Williams is the assistant senior managing editor for Stampington & Company. She lives in Costa Mesa, California, with her husband, Casey, and opinionated cat, Holly Golighty.