Quotes from The School of Essential Ingredients

“Each person's heart breaks in it's own way. Every cure will be different, but there are some things we all need. Before anything else, we need to feel safe.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“Life is beautiful. Some people just remind you of that more than others.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“I used to know a sculptor... He always said that if you looked hard enough, you could see where each person carried his soul in his body. It sounds crazy, but when you saw his sculptures, it made sense. I think the same is true with those we love... Our bodies carry our memories of them, in our muscles, in our skin, in our bones. My children are right here." She pointed to the inside curve of her elbow. "Where I held them when they were babies. Even if there comes a time when I don't know who they are anymore. I believe I will feel them here.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“I am starting to think that maybe memories are like this dessert. I eat it, and it becomes a part of me, whether I remember it later or not.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“The name for the cocoa tree is theobroma, which means "food of the gods." I know that chocolate is meant for us, however, because the melting point for good chocolate just happens to be the temperature within your very human mouth.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“Sometimes, niña, our greatest gifts grow from what we are not given.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“If you live in your sense, slowly, with attention, if you use your eyes and your fingertips and your taste buds, then romance is something you’ll never need a greeting card to make you remember.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“We are all just ingredients, Tom What matters is the grace with which you cook the meal”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“Being around her, he found even every day experiences were deeper, nuanced. Satisfaction and awareness slipped in between the layers of life like love notes hidden in the pages of a textbook.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“I've been wondering," Isabelle commented reflectively over dessert, "if it is foolish to make new memories when you know you are going to lose them.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“When she realized that there are many kinds of love and not all of them are obvious. That some wait like presents in the back of the closet until you are able to open them.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“Every time we prepare food we interrupt a life cycle. We pull up a carrot or kill a crab- or maybe just stop the mold that's growing on a wedge of cheese. We make meals with those ingredients and in doing so we give life to something else. It's a basic equation and if we pretend it doesn't exist, we're likely to miss the other important lesson which is to give respect to both sides of the equation.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“They walked back to the chopping block, Claire carrying the crab in her hands. Helen paused. "You know, I'd like to ask you something a friend asked me once, if you don't think it's too personal."

"What is it?"

"What do you do that makes you happy? Just you?"

Claire looked at Helen for a moment and thought, the crab resting on the block beneath her hands.

"I was just wondering," Helen continued. "No one ever asked me when I was your age, and I think it's a good thing to think about."

Claire nodded. Then she took the cleaver and cut the crab into ten pieces.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“Isabelle had always thought of her mind as a garden, a magical place to play as a child, when the grown-ups were having conversations and she was expected to listen politely-- and even, although she hated to admit this, later with Edward, her husband, when listening to the particularities of his carpet salesmanship wore her thin. Every year the garden grew larger, the paths longer and more complicated. Meadows of memories.

Of course, her mental garden hadn't always been well tended. There were the years when the children were young, fast-moving periods when life flew by without time for the roots of deep reflection, and yet she knew memories were created whether one pondered them or not. She had always considered that one of the luxuries of growing older would be the chance to wander through the garden that had grown while she wasn't looking. She would sit on a bench and let her mind take every path, tend every moment she hadn't paid attention to, appreciate the juxtaposition of the one memory against another.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“When a couple came to class together, it meant something else entirely - food as a solution, a diversion, or, occasionally, a playground.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“While the egg yolks cooled, he directed the beaters at the egg whites, setting the mixer on high speed that sent small bubbles giggling to the side of the bowl, where a few became many until they were a white froth rising up and then lying down again in patters and ridges, leaving an intricate design like the ribs of a leaf in the wake of the beaters”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“Lillian sometimes wondered why psychologists focused so much on a couple’s life in their bedroom. You could learn everything about a couple just watching their kitchen choreography as they prepared dinner.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“I loved to walk in her garden after dinner; it felt alive, even in the winter. She always told me that rosemary grows in the garden of a strong woman. Hers were like trees.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“It was like trying to teach subtlety to a thunderstorm.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“Maybe your mind won't remember what I cooked last week, but your body will.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“If you live in your senses, slowly, with attention, if you use your eyes and your fingertips and your taste buds, then romance is something you’ll never need a greeting card to make you remember.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“I used to know a sculptor," Isabella said, nodding. "He always said that if you looked hard enough, you could see where each person carried his soul in his body. It sounds crazy, but when you saw his sculptures, it made sense. I think the same is true with those we love," she explained. "Our bodies carry our memories of them, in our muscles, in our skin, in our bones. My children are right here." She pointed to the inside curve of her elbow. "Where I held them when they were babies. Even if there comes a time when I don't know who they are anymore, I believe I will feel them here.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“What did she do that made her happy? The question implied action, a conscious purpose. She did many things in a day, and many things made her happy, but that, Claire could tell, wasn’t the issue. Nor the only one, Claire realized. Because in order to consciously do something that made you happy, you’d have to know who you were. Trying to figure that out these days was like fishing on a lake on a moonless night—you had no idea what you would get.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“She became a frame for the picture that was her son and daughter.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“The more she cooked, the more she began to view spices as carriers of the emotions and memories of the places they were originally from and all those they had traveled through over the years.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“And that night she dreamed in French.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“You know, Ian,” Antonia commented, “my father always said a person needs a reason to leave and a reason to go. But I think sometimes the reason to go is so big, it fills you so much, that you don’t even think of why you are leaving, you just do.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“When it was mixed together, the salsa was a celebration of red and white and green, cool and fresh and alive. On a tortilla, with a bit of crumbled white 'queso fresco,' it was both satisfying and invigorating, full of textures and adventures, like childhood held in your hand.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“Helen found ways to sneak summer into the dark months of the year, canning and freezing the fruit off their trees in July and August and using it extravagantly throughout the winter- apple chutney with the Thanksgiving turkey, raspberry sauce across the top of a December pound cake, blueberries in January pancakes.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

“Lillian lifted the cake pans from the oven and rested them on metal racks on the counter. The layers rose level and smooth from the pans; the scent, tinged with vanilla, traveled across the room in soft, heavy waves, filling the space with whispers of other kitchens, other loves. The students food themselves leaning forward in their chairs to greet the smells and the memories that came with them. Breakfast cake baking on a snow day off from school, all the world on holiday. The sound of cookie sheets clanging against the metal oven racks. The bakery that was the reason to get up on cold, dark mornings; a croissant placed warm in a young woman's hand on her way to the job she never meant to have. Christmas, Valentine's, birthdays, flowing together, one cake after another, lit by eyes bright with love.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients

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Popular quotes

“Just make sure you put the books back where you found them when you’re done, or your fellow students will get testy.”
― Joelle Charbonneau, quote from Independent Study

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“I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at last.—But so may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the same thing.
The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, quote from Self-Reliance and Other Essays

“I liked that young man, did not you? There was something particularly pleasing about his manners, which I thought very easy and frank. He has an air of honest manliness, too, which, in these days of fribbles and counter-coxcombs, I own I find refreshing!”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from Bath Tangle

“Thanks, Lieutenant. Casey's going to be really excited about Saturday. Um, can we bring something?"
"Like what?"
"A dish?"
"We have dishes. We have lots of dishes."
"He means food," Peabody interpreted. "Don't worry about it, Trueheart. They're got plenty of that, too."
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"It's a social nicety.”
― J.D. Robb, quote from Indulgence in Death

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.