The Love Season Quotes

“It was like we had known all along that the sky was going to fall and then it fell and we pretended to be surprised.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“An education makes you good company for yourself.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“The Herb Farm reminded Marguerite of the farms in France; it was like a farm in a child's picture book. There was a white wooden fence that penned in sheep and goats, a chicken coop where a dozen warm eggs cost a dollar, a red barn for the two bay horses, and a greenhouse. Half of the greenhouse did what greenhouses do, while the other half had been fashioned into very primitive retail space. The vegetables were sold from wooden crates, all of them grown organically, before such a process even had a name- corn, tomatoes, lettuces, seventeen kinds of herbs, squash, zucchini, carrots with the bushy tops left on, spring onions, radishes, cucumbers, peppers, strawberries for two short weeks in June, pumpkins after the fifteenth of September. There was chèvre made on the premises from the milk of the goats; there was fresh butter. And when Marguerite showed up for the first time in the summer of 1975 there was a ten-year-old boy who had been given the undignified job of cutting zinnias, snapdragons, and bachelor buttons and gathering them into attractive-looking bunches.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“An education makes you good company for yourself”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“Clearly a pretty woman, if you could get past the fact that she was fifteen pounds underweight, had suffered a chemical peel, colored her hair, wore too much makeup and too much jewelry.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“It should be illegal to get married before you’ve traveled on at least three continents, had four lovers, and held down a serious job. It should be illegal to get married before you’ve had your wisdom teeth out, owned your own car, cooked your first Thanksgiving turkey.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“Champagne, she might tell them, was for any night you think you might remember for the rest of your life. It was for nights like tonight.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“ameliorate”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“Marguerite changed the CD to, of all people, Derek and the Dominos, because “Bell Bottom Blues” had been Candace’s favorite song. It was her anthem.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“Marguerite had compiled a list of places she wanted to visit- this fromagerie in the sixth, this chocolatier, this home-goods store for hand-loomed linens, this wine shop, this purveyor of fennel-studded salami, which they ate on slender ficelles, this butcher for roasted bleu de Bresse.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“Three geese stuffed with apples and onions, served with a Roquefort sauce, stuffing with chestnuts, potato gratin, curried carrots, brussel sprouts with bacon and chives-”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“She discovered a whole square devoted to seafood- squid and sea bass, shrimp, prawns, rock lobsters, octopus, sea cucumbers, and a pallet of unidentifiable slugs and snails, creatures with fluorescent fins and prehistoric shells, things Marguerite was sure Dusty Tyler had never seen in all his life. In Morocco, the women did the shopping, all of them in ivory or black burkhas. Most of them kept their faces covered as well; Candace called these women the "only eyes." They peered at Marguerite (who wore an Hermés scarf over her hair, a gift from one of her customers) and she shivered. Marguerite's favorite place of all was the spice market- dozens of tables covered with pyramids of saffron and turmeric, curry powder and cumin, fenugreek, mustard seed, cardamom, paprika, mace, nutmeg.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“She wandered among the wooden crates, picking up tomatoes, peeling back the husks on ears of corn, adding two red peppers to her shopping basket and a bunch of very thin asparagus, a bouquet of zinnias for the table, and seven imperial-looking white and purple gladiolas to put in the stone pitcher that she kept by the front door. She was loaded down with fresh things, beautiful, glorious provisions. Could she stop time and stay here, with her basket full, surrounded by organic produce? Could she just die here and call it a happy end?”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“She opened the tin to show Candace the dark red strands, a fortune in her palm, dearer than this much caviar, this many shaved truffles; it was for spices like this that Columbus had set out in his ship. "Each strand is handpicked from the center of a crocus flower that blooms two weeks of the year.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“But for now, the aioli. Garlic, egg yolks, a wee bit of Dijon mustard. In her Cuisinart she whipped these up to a brilliant, pungent yellow; then she added olive oil in a steady stream. Here was the magic of cooking- an emulsion formed, a rich, garlicky mayonnaise. Salt, pepper, the juice of half a lemon. Marguerite scooped the aioli into a bowl and covered it with plastic.
She barely made it through the marinade for the beef. Her forehead was burning; she felt hot and achy, dried up. She whisked together olive oil, red wine vinegar, sugar, horseradish, Dijon, salt, and pepper and poured it over the tenderloin in a shallow dish.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“Now that was a dinner party, Marguerite thought. Beef tartare with capers on garlic croutons, moules marineres, and homemade frites, a chicory and endive salad with poached eggs and lardons, and crème caramel.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“Jeu de Paume. C'est un petit gout, he'd said. A little taste. The hostel knew Marguerite was a gourmand; he saw the treasures she brought home each night from the boulangerie, the fromagerie, and the green market. Bread, cheese, figs: She ate every night sitting on the floor of her shared room. She was in Paris for the food, not the art, though Marguerite had always loved Renoir and this painting in particular appealed to her. She was attracted to Renoir's women, their beauty, their plump and rosy good health; this painting was alive. The umbrellas- les parapluies- gave the scene a jaunty, festive quality, almost celebratory, as people hoisted them into the air.
It's charming, Marguerite said.
A feast for the eyes, Porter said.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“She covered the bread dough with plastic wrap and put it in the sun, she pulled out her blender and added the ingredients for the pots de crème: eggs, sugar, half a cup of her morning coffee, heavy cream, and eight ounces of melted Schraffenberger chocolate. What could be easier? The food editor of the Calgary paper had sent Marguerite the chocolate in February as a gift, a thank-you- Marguerite had written this very recipe into her column for Valentine's Day and reader response had been enthusiastic. (In the recipe, Marguerite had suggested the reader use "the richest, most decadent block of chocolate available in a fifty-mile radius. Do not- and I repeat- do not use Nestlé or Hershey's!") Marguerite hit the blender's puree button and savored the noise of work. She poured the liquid chocolate into ramekins and placed them in the fridge.
Porter had been wrong about the restaurant, wrong about what people would want or wouldn't want. What people wanted was for a trained chef, a real authority, to show them how to eat. Marguerite built her clientele course by course, meal by meal: the freshest, ripest seasonal ingredients, a delicate balance of rich and creamy, bold and spicy, crunchy, salty, succulent. Everything from scratch. The occasional exception was made: Marguerite's attorney, Damian Vix, was allergic to shellfish, one of the selectmen could not abide tomatoes or the spines of romaine lettuce. Vegetarian? Pregnancy cravings? Marguerite catered to many more whims than she liked to admit, and after the first few summers the customers trusted her. They stopped asking for their steaks well-done or mayonnaise on the side. They ate what she served: frog legs, rabbit and white bean stew under flaky pastry, quinoa.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“Back in the day, Marguerite had worked from lists all the time. She had made daily pilgrimages to Dusty's fish shop, and to the Herb Farm for produce; the meat had been delivered. She had prepared stocks, roasted peppers, baked bread, cultivated yogurt, rolled out crusts, whipped up custards, crushed spices. Les Parapluies was unique in that Marguerite had served one four-course menu- starter, salad, entrée, dessert- that changed each day.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“He sold smoked bluefish pâté and cocktail sauce, lemons, asparagus, corn on the cob, sun-dried tomato pesto, and fresh pasta. He sold Ben & Jerry's, Nantucket Nectars, frozen loaves of French bread. It was a veritable grocery store; before, it had just been fish. Marguerite inspected the specimens in the refrigerated display case; even the fish had changed. There were soft-shell crabs and swordfish chunks ("great for kebabs"); there was unshelled lobster meat selling for $35.99 a pound; there were large shrimp, extra-large shrimp, and jumbo shrimp available with shell or without, cooked or uncooked. But then there were the Dusty staples- the plump, white, day-boat scallops, the fillets of red-purple tuna cut as thick as a paperback novel, the Arctic char and halibut and a whole striped bass that, if Marguerite had to guess, Dusty had caught himself off of Great Point that very morning.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“Whereas once Marguerite had been obsessed with food- with heirloom tomatoes and lamb shanks and farmhouse cheeses, and fish still flopping on the counter, and eggs and chocolate and black truffles and foie gras and rare white nectarines- now the only thing that gave her genuine pleasure was reading.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season

“but she wasn’t sure where. The knee?”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Love Season