Book Title Quotes

“Humans. For the most part, you are dull and blundering. But occasionally, you can be remarkably bright creatures.”
― Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures

“When they had been deciding what to call their company all those years ago, Marx had argued for calling it Tomorrow Games, a name Sam and Sadie instantly rejected as "too soft." Marx explained that the name referenced his favorite speech in Shakespeare, and that it wasn't soft at all.
"Do you have any ideas that aren't from Shakespeare?" Sadie said.
To make his case, Marx jumped up on a kitchen chair and recited the "Tomorrow" speech for them, which he knew by heart:


Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.


"That's bleak," Sadie said.
"Why start a game company? Let's go kill ourselves," Sam joked.
"Also," Sadie said, "What does any of that have to do with games?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Marx said.
It was not obvious to Sam or to Sadie.
"What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever."
"Nice try, handsome," Sadie said. "Next.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“The Side Effects of Dying in Your Pants isn't really funny… Alright, it's a little funny.”
― John Green

“Lengo la jina la kitabu ni kuishawishi hadhira kusoma dibaji, na lengo la dibaji ni kuishawishi hadhira kusoma salio la kitabu kizima.”
― Enock Maregesi

“The devil never tries to make people do the wrong thing by scaring them. He tempts them."
Merritt's forced laugh came out as brittle as overcooked toffee. "Dear, are you claiming Mr. MacRae is the devil in disguise?"
"If he were," Luke replied quietly, "I'd say the disguise has been pretty damned successful so far.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Disguise

“That will be $22.95." He held out a hand, and this time she laughed, the full, delightful belly chuckle he remembered from the past.
"How about I buy you dinner when we get to the Shark Tank instead?" she offered.
"I don't believe that's on our dating plan, Ms. Patel." He pulled out his phone. "Let me see... Hmm. It appears that we've already crossed off the dinner option."
Daisy shrugged. "If you don't like their roast beef sandwiches..."
"With horseradish?"
"And beer."
Liam stroked his chin as if considering. "Double order of fries?"
"Each."
"And for dessert?" he asked.
"Fried Oreos, of course."
He tucked away his phone. "For you, I'm willing to go 'off plan.”
― Sara Desai, The Dating Plan

“In every fairy tale ever told, it's a bad idea to tangle with a magician's daughter."
Nobody, not Hutch, not Rowan, not even herself, had ever referred to her in those terms before. And yet hearing it made her relationship with Rowan so clear and so bright that it hurt. She still didn't know who he was, or why he had done so many of the things he had done. But she knew who he had raised her to be. If he wasn't her father, then she at least was his daughter.”
― H.G. Parry, The Magician’s Daughter

“But it was the broken statue in the corner that drew Elizabeth's attention: a seraphim in despair leaned casually there against the back gate.
"That's Beulah," said Cutter, following her gaze. "Well, for Beulah. Beulah was my great-grandmother and the angel was there on her grave till the storm of sixty-eight knocked her over. She's my garden angel."
"Your garden angel?"
"When I was about seven or so, I heard about guardian angels, how everyone's supposed to have one. Only I heard it garden angel. And I thought of Beulah's angel in the dead garden. I knew she was my garden angel."
Cutter's hands fluttered over the statue, her touch reverent, light, brushing off leaves, stroking the stone face, like feeling the forehead of a feverish child. Moving closer, Elizabeth saw that Beulah was not in despair after all. She was just waking up, maybe, shaking off an afternoon doze, one arm thrown over her face, a dimple in the elbow of a plump arm, her mighty wings curled around her body like wilted leaves.
"I can't tell you how many times I've thought of her before exams, my driver's test, job interviews, even when Gran died. I close my eyes and picture her and I know things will be all right. At least they seem better.”
― Mindy Friddle, The Garden Angel

“There was something about those birds in the glass aviary that was foreboding and sad. They could fly, but they had no sky. The one who had escaped- the homing pigeon- was mourned, but shouldn't he have been celebrated? He had freedom; he had escaped his predictable route between Malibu and Bel-Air and was now flying in bigger and brighter skies, with a flight plan that was spontaneous and new.
And then there was the girl: I had forced myself to forget her but was only successful for an hour or two, and then she would creep back in, the way a spider returns to a musty corner of a room to spin her web.”
― Alex Brunkhorst, The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine

“Just then, the reel snapped off the projector and the screen went black. We stood under the chandelier for one last moment. It cast stars on the floor below us, and we were surrounded by so much velvet I felt like a diamond nestled in a jewel box. But the stars weren't real, and I wasn't a gem. In fact, it was only then that I realized that pretty much everything about the gilded life of Matilda Duplaine was make-believe.”
― Alex Brunkhorst, The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine

“It had a strange scent, dual in nature. It was dark, like death by fire, and very light, like sunshine and freedom. I felt as if I could choose the side I wanted to be on. As if the perfume were asking me: Evangeline, are you darkness or are you light?
I put the stopper itself to my nose. The power of it made me sit down on my dead grandmother's bed. Straight from the vial, the layers were less abstract, and more distinct. There was jasmine from the south of India, and red velvet roses molting on the vine. Further down there was the unmistakable scent of leather warmed by a slow-burning fire.
But still, there was something else in the perfume that I could not name. I inhaled many times in an attempt to understand it, and although I couldn't I knew without a doubt that it was the most important ingredient in the vial. If I had to describe it, I'd say it was the scent of darkness.”
― Margot Berwin, Scent of Darkness

“What's the voice telling you now?" Chloe says.
I pluck the thought like a poison berry and force it to my lips. "That I can't do this."
Chloe tightens her grip on me. "And what do you say back?"
Another thought blooms on my lips, the taste this time somewhere between bitter and sweet. "That I will.”
― Laekan Zea Kemp, Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet

“she could sell in the café provisions she baked in her own time with a shelf life longer than pastries. When she thought of it there had been a rush of certainty she could do it, and a prickling of pride in having conceived a way to make money on her own. It would double at least what she was making now. Without Nicholas it might never had occurred to her. The other day he had stuck a label, which he had found in the junk drawer, on a plastic-wrapped loaf of banana bread. He wrote on the label with a marker, "From the Summer Kitchen Bakery." She had found the gesture adorable at the time and hugged him, but something about it had evidently started percolating in the recesses of her mind, and now she was lapping at the brew like someone tasting it for the first time and wondering how she had never before tasted such ambition. She was thinking of cellophane-packaged chocolate brownies and caramel blondies and orange-and-almond biscotti and pear and oat slices and butter shortbread and Belgian chocolate truffles, marmalades, chutney, relishes, and jellies beautified in jars with black-and-white gingham hats and black-and-white ribbon tied above skirted brims. She could even sell a muesli mix she had developed, full of organic cranberries and nuts and the zest of unwaxed lemons. And she wouldn't change Nicholas's label at all. A child's handwriting impressed that the goods were homemade. She would have his design printed professionally, in black and white, too, old world, like the summer kitchen itself.”
― Karen Weinreb, The Summer Kitchen

“There's satisfaction in knowing something so well-- and knowing someone so well. Like a recipe by heart, every step, every ingredient, every taste. So familiar that it feels a part of her, as soon as her fingers dip into flour or rich skin. Each knead like an argument, each release like a kiss, until something has been made out of practically nothing, a string of separate ingredients mixed together like a courtship until they make one whole, grown stronger by each trial, each compression under two palms.”
― Jennifer Gold, The Ingredients of Us

“If their life together were a recipe, it would be this: tablespoons of late nights talking, a dash of fervent fingers across skin, and too many I love you's to count. Date nights and nights in and days spent in the sunshine or getting caught in the rain or sneaking cigarettes at family functions, and their wedding day. His homemade spaghetti sauce followed by her coffee cake. Their cat, Velcro. Their Greenwood home. Trust, laughter, tears, and pure joy, kneaded into one by years of togetherness.”
― Jennifer Gold, The Ingredients of Us

“That's no secret, honeybee."
"Honeybee?" she repeated, a warning in her voice.
I bit back a grin. "If II'm going to be a honey pie, makes sense you'd be the bee."
The sweep of her brows lowered ominously. "Why? Because I'm after your honey?" She scoffed long and loud, and I had to laugh. If anyone was after honey here, it was me.
"Bees make honey, Em." I nudged her again, hard enough to rock her and make her squeak with a laugh. "And you seem intent upon making me sweet.”
― Kristen Callihan, Make It Sweet

“The beauty of the garden had inspired her art, her attempts to revitalize and preserve the city and redefine it for new generations. But she never imagined the inverse may also hold true. That her art might come to life.
And paint became nectar in a new, beautiful promise.”
― Ashley Clark, Paint and Nectar

“Alice marveled at the flowers. Huge, fragrant, God-praising blooms. That rose, transplanted and broken, giving beauty to this ground. The dirt and the seed, the flood and the flame, all writing a story of where we belong. Where roses grow, but more than that. Where roses bloom, and where life---full and glorious at its crescendo---finds its meaning over and over again.
Maybe the important thing was the same root bound them through any circumstance and any ground. And after a few months, or maybe a few years, the rose would bloom again.
The rose always bloomed again.
Because somewhere, deep within that plant, was life---abundantly.”
― Ashley Clark, Where the Last Rose Blooms

“I never wanted to forget where I'd been and what I'd learned along the way. I used Meyer lemons and good French butter. I zested and stirred and thought of my mom as I worked. And to every hot, bubbling pan of lemon pie filling, I added a single lemon drop. As I watched it melt into the sugar and lemon juice mixture, I reminded myself of the truth I now knew. That you don't need magic to change your life. You just need to follow your bliss as best you can. If you follow the light, no matter how dark the circumstances, things will come out right in the end. That's the true recipe for joy in this life. That's the true magic of lemon drop pie.”
― Rachel Linden, The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie

“Your list is full of dreams and hopes, and that’s only full of charm—anything but curses. It’s a charmed list, I swear.”
― Julie Abe, The Charmed List

“The sauce. Memories flooded into her brain. It was zabaione. She had a sudden vision of herself, that first night in Tomasso's apartment, licking sauce from her fingers.
Coffee. The next taste was coffee. Memories of Gennaro's espresso, and mornings in bed with a cup of cappuccino... but what was this? Bread soaked in sweet wine. And nuts--- a thin layer of hazelnut paste---and then fresh white peaches, sweet as sex itself, and then a layer of black chocolate so strong and bitter she almost stopped dead. There was more sweetness beyond it, though, a layer of pastry flavored with blackberries, and, right at the center, a single tiny fig.
She put down the spoon, amazed. It was all gone. She had eaten it without being aware of eating, her mind in a reverie.
"Did you like it?"
She looked up. Somehow she wasn't surprised. "What was it?" she asked.
"It doesn't have a name," Bruno said. "It's just... it's just the food of love.”
― Anthony Capella, The Food of Love

“Now that this latest order of beignets was done, Tiana turned her attention back to the pot of gumbo gurgling on the stovetop. She took in the dents and pings along the walls of her daddy's big gumbo pot. Every imperfection was perfect in her eyes.
"How's that gumbo coming along, baby girl?"
"It's almost there," Tiana called.
Her father came over and pulled her into a side hug. "Smells good."
"And it tastes even better." She scooped up a big spoonful of the gumbo and blew lightly across it. Then she held the spoon up to him and grinned as he sipped a bit of the dark brown liquid.
"Just like your daddy taught you to make it," he said.”
― Farrah Rochon, Almost There

“She took over the driving duties again, not trusting anyone else to get her to her destination. She was once again in control of her own destiny.
"Almost there," Tiana whispered.”
― Farrah Rochon, Almost There

“There was one my dad told me, setting down the book, since he knew the story by heart, about a fairy queen who lived in the center of the marsh. She was both beautiful and terrible, angry at times and kind at others, and rarely seen by mortals. Mostly she took the form of a great blue heron, surveying her kingdom and all the creatures in it. She disdained most humans, except those she helped make the passage into the next world. But if a living person had a sincere wish and she deemed it noble, she would rise up out of the swamp in her true form, with her Spanish-moss hair and her eyes like the sharpest sunbeams, and she would ask the human to perform a nearly impossible task. If they did, she would grant the wish.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“He gave me the birds, and he gave me the swamp. At some point he stopped trying to teach me the finer points of fishing. He saw what I liked about the place and supplied a way to describe it. "Pond chicken," he'd say, at the movement of something purple in the reeds, or "Kingfisher," when a small rocket flew past and ahead of us, close to the water.
Once, in the same tone of voice, he said, "Swamp girl."
I turned, quick, to see.
"That's you, Loni Mae." He looked at me sideways and laughed. Shafts of sunlight shone through the Spanish moss above him. "Or no. I got a better name for you. The Marsh Queen.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“I draw the blue heron flying up and protecting her territory. The purest images come as I wake, and I need to catch them before they disappear. As I sketch, the old story my father used to tell echoes in my brain. No wonder the fairy queen of the marsh chose this bird to inhabit. The heron is regal in her blue, asserting her will with shimmering, outstretched wings.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Great-grandma Elisa Ramires was a promising cook at an inn. The job was her only opportunity to raise Grandma on her own, so she made herself famous with a buttery, delicately savory fubá cake recipe. Dona Elizabete Molina had been at the inn longer than Great-grandma, and she was also famous for her own recipe. Milk pudding. It was said to be so smooth it slid on your tongue.
The two were often at odds. They each wanted to prove to the neighborhood who was the best cook in town, and the opportunity came about with a cooking contest.
The night before the contest, Great-grandma and Dona Elizabete were busy preparing their entry dishes and tending to the many guests at the inn. It was a busy night, with many tourists in town for Carnival.
Nerves frazzled, shoulder to shoulder, and vying for space in the small kitchen, the story goes that the cooks accidentally tripped each other and sent their cake and pudding flying off the trays.
Miraculously, the layers stacked up. Dona Elizabete's milk pudding landed atop Great-grandma's fubá cake. Maybe Dona Elizabete held the tray at the right angle until the last second and the pudding had enough surface tension to just slide off the right way without breaking. Maybe Great-grandma's cake was firm enough to hold the delicate layer of pudding atop. Whatever the case, they tried this new, accidental two-layered cake and realized that their recipes complemented each other beautifully. When they passed samples around to the guests, their reaction was proof that they'd produced perfection.
No one remembers if they still entered the contest. Because from that moment on, the only thing everyone could talk about was their new recipe, the one they called "Salt and Sugar". One layer fubá cake, one layer pudding.”
― Rebecca Carvalho, Salt and Sugar

“Our cake represents the best our families' bakeries Salt and Sugar have to offer," Pedro says, addressing the audience. "Two layers. There's the savory, nourishing quality of Parmesan corn and the sweetness of a guava-drizzled cake that's a reinterpretation of bolo de rolo. Two flavors that are dominant by themselves, meeting to complement each other." He points at each layer. "Salt and Sugar. Just like our families' bakeries."
The judge smiles. "Thank you, kids. And what do you call your cake?"
I meet Pedro's eyes. Deciding on the name wasn't hard. But saying it out loud in front of our families could go either way.
"Romário and Julieta," we say in unison.”
― Rebecca Carvalho, Salt and Sugar

“I managed a single glance over my shoulder, and what did my gaze fall upon but my encyclopaedia, pages stacked tidily beneath my paperweight, little bookmarks sticking out the sides indicating sections requiring revision. That pinnacle of faerie scholarship, which I had only weeks ago likened to a museum exhibit of the Folk, neatly pinned down and labelled by the foremost expert on the subject---that is, me---brimming with meticulously documented accounts of foolish mortals who bumbled into faerie plots and games.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries

“I'll be your fake boyfriend whether you kiss me or not."
His hand grazed the small of her back, the tension between them almost magnetic as he continued, "But I hope you will."
She licked her lower lip, and her breath faltered. "You're not wrong. I like you. You're kind. And you're weirdly sweet. And..." Her gaze fixed on his mouth, then flicked back to his eyes. "You have amazing lips."
"So do you," he replied, and stroked a lock of her hair off her face.
He grinned and leaned into her. "Kiss me, mi amor.”
― Alana Albertson, Kiss Me, Mi Amor