Nick White > Quotes

“For years, I’d wanted God to work his magic on me and transform my spirit—a kind of self-obliteration in itself—and when that didn’t work, I had wanted him to stop time and hit reverse. He’s the Almighty, after all, so why couldn’t he? I wanted him to go to the point in the world’s timeline just before my father’s sperm met my mother’s egg and use his holy finger to block the fertilization.”
― Nick White, How to Survive a Summer

“The danger of becoming the person you are is you run the risk of hurting the people who love the person you were.”
― Nick White, How to Survive a Summer

“Her most favored dish—the one the three families requested most for fifth-Sunday meals—was the cream-cheese crescent squares, known affectionately as Sugar Dump, for obvious reasons. The few times she bought expensive name brands were when she fixed this dish. A layer of Pillsbury crescent rolls popped from the tube and rolled out onto a casserole dish. Then a layer of Philadelphia cream cheese mixed with a cup of sugar, followed by another layer of crescent rolls. She baked it at 350 for thirty minutes, and while it cooled, she drizzled the top with a thin glaze of powdered sugar and milk. A simple recipe with store-bought ingredients, but people loved it. I suspect my mother took great pleasure in feeding her husband’s congregation. Perhaps a kind of communion: The more they ate her food, the less she felt like that old Debra Rose, the bona fide wild woman I wanted to meet, and more like the woman she had willed herself to be: Dr. Dillard’s wife.”
― Nick White, How to Survive a Summer