11 Quotes by Jeanne Ray

I wasn't so inclined to tell anyone else in my family about my plan. It was very new and felt about as vulnerable as a day-old mouse, its eyelids still sealed shut.

Five minutes later she came back to the car wearing low fitted gray pants, high-heeled black boots, a white T-shirt, and a long black nylon coat that flapped behind her like a graceful set of wings. She had on eyeliner and her hair was pulled back into a severe ponytail. She looked like a rock star or a publicist for rock stars.

Gently boiling potatoes make a sound not unlike a small stream moving quickly over rocks. I thought it would be perfect for one of those ambient-noise tapes: The Ocean; Wind in the Pine Trees; Boiling Potatoes. It was very soothing. I measured baking powder to its dulcet tones.

The timer rang and I went to take two more sweet potato cakes out of the oven. There was a pot of sweet potatoes simmering on the stove. The kitchen was a warm and steamy place that smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg. A tropical rain forest of baking.

Had I ever spent the day in our neighborhood public high school as an invisible woman while my children were still enrolled there, I no doubt would have insisted on home schooling.

A slice of cake never made anyone fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You don’t eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what is served on the happiest days of your life.

I want to try to figure out what I’m supposed to do, what I might be good at. I really want to be good at something, to feel passionate about it.

I never knew people could be afraid of good news too. I realized that good news took you places you didn’t know anything about. It changed everything as much as bad news.

In the most fundamental way I have my first glimpse of how the ingredients come together, how each is nothing in particular by itself but once they are joined they can make something miraculous.