78 Quotes by Erica Bauermeister

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.

I could smell her perfume, sultry and deep, too loud for such a small space."Poison," Victoria said, shooting me a knowing smile."What?" Fisher said, turning."It's a fragrance, circa 1985," she explained. "It got completely cheapened later, but the vintage stuff is still striking." She paused, sniffing lightly, ticking off scents on her fingers. "Plum, coriander, and opoponax.""What?""It's a myrrh.

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.

She had built her restaurant kitchen out of scents and tastes and textures, the clean canvas of a round white dinner plate, the firm skins of pears and the generosity of soft cheeses, the many-colored spices sitting in glass jars along the open shelves like a family portrait gallery. She belonged there.

The kids threw the rumors out like lit matches, to see what would catch. I stayed silent, listening to the fizz and spark of their words, pretending I was water, putting them out.

For years now, she had woken up like a runner leaping from the starting blocks - her body yanked into consciousness by a baby's wail, the sound of the puppy vomiting, the growl of the trash truck two doors away, their own trash cans still waiting to be put out on the curb. Sleep tossed over her shoulder as she sprinted down the hall, leaving dreams in a scattered trail behind her. (p125)

TIME WENT ON, life with the children unfolding in its own ecosystem, small plastic toys seeming to grow up from the carpet like mushrooms, clothes falling to the floor like autumn leaves. Every once in a while she would blaze through the house and clean everything--at which point, the process would start all over.

She found herself wondering at what point in her life she had ceased to be Gulliver and had become the strings holding him to the ground.

My father had always told me that my birthday was the first day of spring. Not a specific day of the year, but the feeling- an undercurrent of warmth waking up the earth. The scent of violets. Green in the air, he called it.