Offbeat Quotes

“I'm the first to admit that I don't write right. Now, relax and enjoy the show! The sideshow, that is.”
― Lori R. Lopez

“Although my words were temperate and well-expressed, they seemed to repulse Ava. My timing has never been precise. Ava regarded me the way a widow spider examines a housefly. She laughed loudly, a vulgar Occidental laugh, the laugh of a person who wraps their next meal in silk before draining their lifeblood. But, I have been known to imagine things.”
― Michael Benzehabe, Persianality

“Sarah has read books on manners and good conduct, written in the language of the Arabs. I know she turned those pages. Watch her: perfect posture, grace in every step, perfect clothes. Not very fashionable, but clean and beautifully pressed.”
― Michael Benzehabe, Persianality

“I'm sure love has its own means of survival, its preferred host, its ideal temperature, its own law of thermodynamics. Why else would women crave hot baths?”
― Michael Benzehabe, Persianality

“Iran. Hot for certainties, but all us women get are rhymes. Always a metaphor; always a clever turn of phrase; always quoting poets without giving a direct answer. Give us definitive wedding dates. That's certainty! Those are the certainties we ache for--as certain as the sunlight that our sun-loving botany aches for.”
― Michael Benzehabe, Persianality

“He moves me to madness. He's an indescribable poetic impression. He's Persian blood re-defined by Parisian culture, softened in the right places, yet, fierce where it counts. Dreamy. The kind of boy you can't get too close to, because you might get lost in his brown eyes and melancholy.”
― Michael Benzehabe, Persianality

“Weetzie could not even cry and make Kleenex roses. She remembered the day her father, Charlie, had driven away in the smashed yellow T-bird, leaving her mother Brandy-Lynn clutching her flowered robe with one hand and an empty glass in the other, and leaving Weetzie holding her arms crossed over her chest that was taking its time to develope into anything”
― Francesca Lia Block, Dangerous Angels

“The goal of flavor creation is to reach the seven-year-old inside the forty-seven-year-old," Brian explains of their instant connection with customers. While other ice cream start-ups in the city- and there have been plenty launches since Ample Hills, including Oddfellows (2013), Morgenstern's (2014), and Ice & Vice (2015), to name a few- have found their success in offbeat flavors like avocado, extra virgin olive oil, red bean, and chorizo caramel, they aren't made in the same spirit of evoking the fun and play of childhood that Brian finds essential. It's a different brand of creativity.
Even though it inevitably meant waiting in a long line, I loved being the one to go to Ample Hills to pick up a pint because it also meant sampling the flavors. Each one is sweet and creamy, über-rich, and totally original. They're loaded with so many ingredients you never tire of taste testing them. There's Ooey Gooey Butter Cake, a full-flavor vanilla that's studded with chunks of rich, dense Saint Louis-style cake; The Munchies, a salty-sweet pretzel-infused ice cream chock-full of Ritz crackers, potato chips, M&M's, and more pretzels; Nonna D's Oatmeal Lace is brown-sugar-and-cinnamon ice cream chunked with homemade oatmeal cookies; and their signature flavor, Salted Crack Caramel, which involves caramelizing large amounts of sugar on the stove top until it's nearly burnt, giving it a bitterness that distinguishes their version from all the other salted caramels out there.”
― Amy Thomas, Brooklyn in Love: A Delicious Memoir of Food, Family, and Finding Yourself