The long, hot days of summer seem to insist that we slow down, relax, and savor the sun on our skin. Kids revel in having time off school, and workers find that after clocking out for the day, there are still hours of sunlight with which to BBQ, take long strolls, or dip in the water.

Though we hardly needed them, there have been several studies exploring why people tend to be happier in the summer months. We sleep better, get more sun (which boosts our vitamin D levels), and eat more fruits and vegetables, all of which lead to improved health. At the same time, exposure to sunlight boosts the brain’s levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in experiencing pleasure, which can, in turn, boost our libidos and lead us to have more amorous encounters. All of these factors work in unison to create ample opportunities for a feel-good season of fun and sun.

Of course, there is a point at which the increasing heat of the day begins to work against our happiness and health. Scientists agree that, over the coming years, climate change will bring increasingly high temperatures and more days of record-setting heat. It's important to stay safe and cool down when we need to, so that we can appreciate the warmth, freedom, and lightness that this special season brings.

Hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain, and its heart of nerves, which sizzle like the wires inside a lightbulb. And there exudes a sour extra-human smell that makes the very stone seem flesh-alive, webbed and pulsing.
― Truman Capote

Again and again, the cicada's untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth.
― Yukio Mishima

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

There's something about the summer... the promise that anything could happen.
— 2015 movie “Careful What You Wish For” (written by Chris Frisina)

Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
— Henry James

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

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

Every summer, like the roses, childhood returns.
— Marty Rubin

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

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.
— Sam Keen

Everything good, everything magical happens between the months of June and August.
—  Jenny Han

Green was the silence, wet was the light / the month of June trembled like a butterfly.
― Pablo Neruda

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”

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."
― Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird”

Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.
― Yoko Ono

We know summer is the height of being alive.
― Gary Shteyngart

In summer, the song sings itself.
― William Carlos Williams

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”

If it could only be like this always — always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe.
― Evelyn Waugh

One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.
― Henry David Thoreau

Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June.
― Al Bernstein

Summertime is always the best of what might be.
― Charles Bowden

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