46 Quotes by Diana Abu-Jaber

It's a big formless, arctic night, the stars so bright they seem to hiss. I walk with my hands in pockets, arms pressed to my sides. Even in my down parka, the cold is still there. I feel as though my blood is crackling in it, my bones conducting cold like wires. My toes are curled in their boots.

Sirine finishes deskewering six plates of lamb shish kabobs and three plates of chicken, drizzling oil over ground beef and hummus, over smoky puréed eggplant, over a bowl of olives, and splashing four tabbouleh salads with lemon.

There are so many slight things she can distinguish between her senses: she can smell the difference between lavender and clover honeys; she can feel the softening progression of ripeness in a pear; and she can sense how much heat is rising in a panful of gravy, lentils, garlic.

Flour and yolk and cream are all coarse- of the earth. But sugar and air and vanilla are elements of the firmament. Avis used to tell her kids: Sweets should be an evanescence, cakes and pies represent minutes, cookies and milles-feuilles are seconds, meringues are moments.

At work, Sirine announces that this year will be an Arabic Thanksgiving with rice and pine nuts and ground lamb in the turkey instead of cornbread, and yogurt sauce instead of cranberries. Mireille sulks and says she doesn't like yogurt and Sirine says, annoyed, why can't we ever do things differently? And Um-Nadia says, girls, never mind already, we can have the for-crying-out-loud rice stuffing and I'll bring the can of the red berries sauce.

The way I look at it, you should feel glad that Han found out about the bad thing. It’s the only way to know if someone can love you— if they still love you even after they know about the bad thing. Or the twenty-eight bad things. All of it.

This is also a story about what a good thing it is to forgive— a relief to the one who did the bad thing, and a great relief to the one who gets to forgive!

She collects a tray from the kitchen: arranges almond and mango cream puffs, brown sugar lace cookies, and miniature napoleons of vanilla and guava: fleeting breaths of pate a choux and buttercreams that dissolve in single bites.

The flavors are intense in her mouth, the sweet-almondy fruitiness of the pistachios beside the smoky sour taste of the sumac, delicate saffron, and herbal notes of olive.