Sweet Salt Air Quotes

“Life is like a game of cards. It deals you different hands at different times. You don't have that old hand anymore, . . . . Look at what you have now.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Every man wants love, if he can get past the fear of exposure.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“life isn’t black or white. There isn’t only one picture that’s perfect. It’s about piecing together shades of gray to make something quite stunning. And the picture shifts. That’s another Dad-ism. Remember his sea shadows? Each time the shadow moves, there’s a new image. Only sometimes those clouds are stuck up there, so we’re the ones who have to move to see it.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Barbara, you have done it again! Sweet Salt Air is a fabulous story of friendship, betrayal, courage and love with family and friends. Having been raised in Maine, she writes 'to the T, in describing beautiful and simple lives on a Maine Island.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Quinnipeague in August was a lush green place where inchworms dangled from trees whose leaves were so full that the eaten parts were barely missed. Mornings meant 'thick o' fog' that caught on rooftops and dripped, blurring weathered gray shingles while barely muting the deep pink of rosa rugosa or the hydrangea's blue. Wood smoke filled the air on rainy days, pine sap on sunny ones, and wafting through it all was the briny smell of the sea.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Pain is pain. You have a right to feel it.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Little bits were one of Dorey Jewett's gems: small, sweet lobster knuckles that were sautéed in butter. There were no herbs involved, just enough of a Ritz-cracker coating to absorb the butter for ease of eating.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“In the kitchen, she made passionflower tea, turning the jar of loose leaves in her hand while a teaspoon's worth steeped in her mug. The tea was local, made from an herb that rarely grew in New England but did on Quinnipeague. A natural sedative, passionflower was another of Cecily Cole's gems.
The tea was still steeping when she decided she was hungry. On impulse, she took a jar of strawberry jam from the cupboard. It, too, was local, put up the fall before by one of the island women. Unscrewing the lid, she pried a layer of wax from the top and, taking a spoon, sampled it straight from the jar. She closed her eyes, isolating the sense of taste for the greatest enjoyment. Strawberries... and vanilla? Eyes popping open, she peered into the glass until she spotted the bean among the berries. A single bean. No surprise there. Vanilla beans came from a variety of orchid that had no business growing up on Quinnipeague, but did. Not only was the flower a more vivid yellow than elsewhere, but the bean was potent.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“She thought about this. She had analyzed it in depth. When you live alone, travel alone, exist solely on the outskirts of other people's lives, you do have time to wonder why what you want most in life is out of reach. You also have the time to tell yourself that you don't want it at all, though whether you can ever be completely convinced is something else.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Is it harder to dream about what you don't have, than to live in fear of losing what you do?”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Life is like a game of cards. It deals you different hands at different times. You don’t have that old hand anymore, Leo. Look at what you have now.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“voice.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“June would always be Charlotte's favorite month on Quinnipeague. She loved the frothy roil of the sea as it recovered from a day of rain, and in those early mornings, before the fog lifted and sun warmed the island, there was nothing, nothing better than a wood fire, wool socks, and hot chocolate made from scratch.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“While Nicole drove off in search of recipes for fish hash, clam fritters, and salmon quiche, Charlotte settled in the Chowder House with Dorey Jewett, who, well beyond the assortment of chowders she always brought to Bailey's Brunch, would be as important a figure in the book as any.
They sat in the kitchen, though Dorey did little actual sitting. Looking her chef-self in T-shirt, shorts, and apron, if she wasn't dicing veggies, she was clarifying butter or supervising a young boy who was shucking clams dug from the flats hours before. Even this early, the kitchen smelled of chowder bubbling in huge steel pots.
Much as Anna Cabot had done for the island in general, Dorey gave a history of restaurants on Quinnipeague, from the first fish stand at the pier, to a primitive burger hut on the bluff, to a short-lived diner on Main Street, to the current Grill and Cafe. Naturally, she spoke at greatest length about the evolution of the Chowder House, whose success she credited to her father, though the man had been dead for nearly twenty years. Everyone knew Dorey was the one who had brought the place into the twenty-first century, but her family loyalty was endearing.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Waking up Thursday morning to another dreary day and the sense of being physically stuffed, they focused on FISH. While Charlotte interviewed the postmaster about the origin, techniques, and ingredients for his best-in-Maine lobster bakes, Nicole set off to gather recipes for glazed salmon, baked pesto haddock, and cod crusted with marjoram, a minted savory unique to Quinnipeague, and sage.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“She spent the afternoon typing up notes, answering readers' questions, and blogging about a new online source for organic cinnamon and nutmeg, either of which she could have used for testing the island recipe for Indian Pudding that afternoon. Both spices were produced from a tropical evergreen that, Cecily's miracles notwithstanding, did not grow on Quinnipeague, but since Indian pudding was a prized dessert here, Nicole refused to leave it out. Typically, Quinnie Indian Pudding called for cider molasses made from island apples. The recipe she had been given listed bottled molasses, which she supposed made sense, given its wider availability, though the taste wasn't quite the same. She made a mental note to ask Bev Simone about her supply of the real stuff.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Nicole craved sweets. Her list included peach pie, rhubarb pie, and pumpkin pie, all of which would be on hand the following week for the Fourth of July cookout on the bluff, so she knew Quinnie cooks would have their recipe cards nearby. In addition to pies, she wanted recipes for blueberry cobbler, apple crisp, molasses Indian pudding, Isobel Skane's chocolate almond candy, and, of course, Melissa Parker's marble macadamia brownies.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“French toast? Frittata?
Definitely frittata.
Leaving the table again, she transferred a small packet from freezer to fridge. It was salmon, home-smoked on the island and more delicious than any she had ever found elsewhere. Smoked salmon wasn't Cecily's doing, but the dried basil and thyme she took from the herb rack were. Taking a vacuum-sealed package of sun-dried tomatoes from the cupboard, she set it on the counter beside the herbs. Frittata, hot biscuits, and fruit salad. With mimosas. And coffee. That sounded right. Eaten out on the deck maybe?
No, not on the deck, unless the prevailing winds turned suddenly warm.
They would eat here in the kitchen, with whatever flowers the morning produced. Surely more lavender. A woman could never have enough lavender- or daylilies or astilbe, neither of which should bloom this early, but both of which had looked further along than the lavender, yesterday morning, so you never knew.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Dorey says the key to chowder is letting the ingredients cure in the pot for a day before dishing it up, which is counterintuitive since fried clams are best right after they're dug. Personally, I think it's the chives in the chowder." Pensive, she studied her empty bowl. "Or the bacon. Or the parsley." Her eyes rose. "Maybe it's just the butter. Since Dorey's chowder is Maine style, more milk than cream, the butter shines.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Clams served on Quinnipeague were dug from the from the flats hours before cooking, and the batter, which was exquisitely light, held bits of parsley and thyme. Other fried clams couldn't compare.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Remember the first time you ever came? Tell the truth. You were dreading it."
His brown eyes laughed warmly. "What wasn't to dread? A godforsaken island in the middle of the Atlantic-"
"It's only eleven miles out."
"Same difference. If it didn't have a hospital, it wasn't on my radar screen."
"You thought there'd be dirt roads and nothing to do."
He gave a wry chuckle. Between lobstering, clamming, and sailing, then movie nights at the church and mornings at the cafe, not to mention dinners at home, in town, or at the homes of friends, Nicole had kept him busy.
"You loved it," she dared.
"I did," he admitted. "It was perfect. A world away.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“I go to farmers' markets all the time. Field-to-table is so my thing. But none of the herbs at any of them comes close to island herbs. Those herbs make Quinnie food- well, those herbs and freshness. Quinnipeague was growing organic and cooking local before farm-to-table was a movement, but, still, we think of the herbs first. I can't write about island cooking without talking about them, but I can't not talk about the people, either. That's where you come in, Charlotte. You've eaten Dorey Jewett's lobster stew and Mary Landry's clam fritters, and you always loved the fruit compote that Bonnie Stroud brought to the Fourth of July dinner each year. These people are all still around. Each has a story. I want to include some in the book, but I'm better at writing about food than people.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Whether she was writing to tell her followers about a local cheesemaker, a new farm-to-table restaurant, or what to do with an exotic heirloom fruit that was organically produced and newly marketed, she spent hours each day scouring Philadelphia and the outlying towns for material.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“There, on the far side of of the Atlantic, would be Maine, but despite the shared ocean, her island and this one were worlds apart. Where Inishmaan was gray and brown, its fragile man-made soil supporting only the hardiest of low-growing plants, the fertile Quinnipeague invited tall pines in droves, not to mention vegetables, flowers, and improbable, irrepressible herbs. Lifting her head, eyes closed now, she breathed in the damp Irish air and the bit of wood smoke that drifted on the cold ocean wind. Quinnipeague smelled of wood smoke, too, since early mornings there could be chilly, even in summer. But the wood smoke would clear by noon, giving way to the smell of lavender, balsam, and grass. If the winds were from the west, there would be fry smells from the Chowder House; if from the south, the earthiness of the clam flats; if from the northeast, the purity of sweet salt air.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Charlotte Evans was used to feeling grungy. As a freelancer, she traveled on a shoestring, getting stories other writers did not, precisely because she wasn't fussy about how she lived. In the last twelve months, she had survived dust while writing about elephant keepers in Kenya, ice while writing about the spirit bear of British Columbia, and flies while writing about a family of nomads in India.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“So, is it harder to dream about what you don´t have than to live in fear of losing what you do?”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Mother-daughter disagreements were, in hindsight, basically mother stating the truth and daughter taking her own sweet time coming around.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Aim high, hit high.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air

“Il l’emporta – il la transporta loin, vers un endroit où elle n’aurait jamais pu aller sans lui- mais, lorsque ce fut fini, le retour ne l’effraya pas. Leo semblait solide. Enraciné. Vrai.
Ils restèrent assis dans l’herbe un long moment. Il avait le dos appuyé contre le tronc d’un arbre et un bras autour de Charlotte, qui avait posé la joue contre son torse. Ce torse était doux, musclé et sentait Leo. Gagnée par une grande paix intérieure, elle aurait pu rester là pour toujours.”
― Barbara Delinsky, Sweet Salt Air