They call my country the land of the free, but I was born poor and black, and there wasn’t much that was free about that.

Some things you cannot leave behind. Your history will pursue you doggedly across frontiers and over oceans. It will slip past the unsmiling border guards, fold itself invisibly into the pages of your passport, a silent, treacherous stowaway.

From across her husband’s open grave I had thought she exuded a certain foxy mystique, but now, to my disappointment, she looked just like every other mother I knew.

There’s just so much to live for.

You’ll leave. And then one day you’ll come back, and everything that you once loved about the place will drive you a little bit crazy.

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; love leaves a memory no one can steal.

But love and pain are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. Sometimes that’s how we know we’re alive.

The women would not be looking at him like this if he were carrying lilies, reflects Jean-Paul. Flowers have there own silent vocabulary. There are blooms for love, for friendship, for sorrow, and for joy. He inspect the roses he is carrying. Long-stemmed and elegant, they have been grown, selected, arranged, and purchased for a single, unambiguous purpose: to seduce.

He remembered his mother once telling him that there were more than three hundred types of cheese made in France. Soured had solemnly replied that one day he would go there and try every one.There were worse reasons to choose a place to live

It's not about exact measurements or ingredients', shrugged Lomax, when Joseph complained. 'Good food is about feeling. Cooking is an art, not a science. You got to have soul to feed people right.' He smiled. 'That's what this is. Soul food.