The Art of Inheriting Secrets Quotes

“That isn’t who you are. You’re afraid. And you cannot have a life of great meaning if you make decisions out of fear.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“Life had washed me here on this strange errand. Maybe the best thing to do was to just let it show me what it had in mind.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“I sipped my hot, sweet, milky tea, feeling myself settle, center. I couldn't possibly stay in a state of high emotion, and there was a lot to get through in the next few days or weeks. Right this minute, I could enjoy this table in a bakery in a small English village. The place was clearing out, and the chelsea bun beckoned. It was a coil of pastry laced with currants and a hint of lemon zest, quite sweet. I gave it the attention it deserved, since a person couldn't be pigging out on pastries and eggs and bacon all the time. Not me, anyway. Unlike my slender mother, I was built of rounder stuff, and I hadn't been able to walk as much as was my habit.
In the meantime, the tea was excellent, served in a sturdy silver pot with a mug that didn't seem to match any other mug on the tables. The room smelled of yeast and coffee and cinnamon and the perfume of a woman who had walked by. Light classical music played quietly. From the kitchen came voices engaged in the production of all the goods in the case. A rich sense of well-being spread through me, and I realized that my leg didn't hurt at all.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“you cannot have a life of great meaning if you make decisions out of fear.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water,”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“I read stories about dinner parties and a lost dog and the best methods for canning peaches, but not another word about a missing fifteen-year-old girl. Would it have been different if it had been a white child instead of a brown one? It made me sad to think so, but I suspected that was at the heart of it.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“Look at this.” She held up the sketchbook to show a densely drawn page of a dark forest—alive with eyes. Eyes in the leaves. Eyes in the trunks. Eyes in the very rocks on the ground. It was terrifying. What was in the forest?”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“the night sang its own song, crickets in the shrubs and water running somewhere far away. An owl hooted at the moon.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“Finally, she snatched the key from the counter, hung it back on its hook, and took another. “You’ll hear the pub, but no one’ll be singing until Friday.” She leaned over the bar. “Allen! Come show the lady to her room.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.’ That’s what this is, you and me.” “Yes.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“I love to read, and honestly, who cares what category it is? A good book is a good book.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“Wordlessness, focusing on the moment, letting go of the crazy voices all vying for attention.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“There is another famous quote from Tagore,” he said, holding my face. “‘I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.’ That’s what this is, you and me.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water,” he said. “Is that a quote?” He nodded. “Rabindranath Tagore. He’s a great writer. You should read him.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“glimpse”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“cauldron of bats.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“Gliding through the garden was a peacock. It might have even been thee same one I'd seen before, with a tall crown and gorgeous deep-blue chest. Arrogantly, he turned his face away from us, as if we were below his notice, and called out to the forest. From the trees came an answer, and he strutted off, king of his domain. "They are so beautiful." Pavi sighed.
"Samir told me there is a flock that lives in the forest."
"Roses and peacocks. It's like the setting for a fairy tale."
I looked around. "It's going to take more than a kiss to save this place." I thought of the single rose blooming into the parlor when Samir and I had first walked through. "But it does feel sometimes like it's under an enchantment."
One tall rose drew my eye, a castle atop a small hill, with tangles of white damask roses around it, as if on guard. The rose was orange and yellow with touches of pink, and I recognized it immediately from a hundred of my mother's paintings. It seemed larger than others of the same type, as haughty as the peacock, and I rounded the overgrown white roses to see if I could find a way in.
Pavi, however, was enchanted by the damasks. "These are prime," she cried, burying her nose in a mass of them. "The perfect flower for rosewater. It will be clear and very, very fragrant.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“I love Leonard Cohen, but he's not the guy you want on in the background when you're working or whatever."
"Brilliant. I've studied his poetry, of course, but never heard him sing."
"My mom loved him. She had a taste for dark themes, sad music- all that regret, you know- and Cohen has this great, deep voice, rumbly, raw, but it's the words that make his songs. He was such an old, old soul, especially about relationships.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“I noticed a lot of magic realism- Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez and Alice Hoffman. I tugged down Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate, a small book with an art deco cover, and a wave of warmth spread through me- it was one of my favorites, magic realism centered on food and sex. Leafing through the pages, I revisited the pleasure of the reading, feeling myself on a foggy winter day in San Francisco drinking hot chocolate.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“Like everything else we'd eaten tonight, it took the ordinary to an extraordinary place- I tasted a thousand fluttering roses and a rain of sugar and the soft, spongy texture of the dumpling itself.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“Instead of Coriander, I chose a French-style bistro, quiet and easy, where the server talked me into the braised rabbit, which arrived exquisitely tender in a gravy of such textured depth that I took out my notebook and scribbled a few notes on what I thought the ingredients might be. Thyme, rosemary, carrots, and parsley. Mushrooms and mustard and shallots.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“There are some paintings in this room. Come see."
The hallway was a mirror image of the one upstairs, following the length of the E, but this floor was more luxurious, with more golden wood on the walls.
"Here," he said and pushed open a creaky door to reveal a room as lush and surprising in all the rot as a blooming bougainvillea in a desert. Time and ruin showed here, too, but even so, the colors were visible- patterns and embroidery and exuberant fabrics. Paintings of a dozen sizes crowded together on the walls, the frames thick with dust and strings of cobwebs, paintings of peacocks and tropical landscapes and portraits of exotic people- a sultan in a harem, a tall dark-skinned woman with dark eyes as mysterious as a deep lake, a tiger lolling on a carpet amid a crowd of beautiful women.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“I imagined a ball, visitors coming in from all over England, or perhaps a house party. Most of my idea of old houses had come from Downtown Abbey, and I imagined women in delicate Edwardian dresses headed for dinner, ropes of pearls and rubies looped around their thin necks. As if to accommodate my vision, I opened one of the doors to find a peacock-themed room, redolent with the fading colonial era.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“From my bag, I took out a Moleskine notebook and a pen that I always carried for essay ideas and made notes on the setting. The clothes and attitudes of the passersby, the kind of shops that populated the hallways, the cakes in the case, so different from what I'd see at Starbucks in the US- these heavier slices, richer and smaller, along with an array of little tarts.
I sketched them, finding my lines ragged and unsure at first. Then as I let go a bit, the contours took on more confidence. My pen made the wavy line of a tartlet, the voluptuous rounds of a danish.
The barista, a leggy girl with wispy black hair, came from behind the counter to wipe down tables, and I asked, "Which one of those cakes is your favorite?"
"Carrot," she said without hesitation. "Do you want to try one?"
If I ate cake every time I sat down for coffee, I'd be as big as a castle by the time I went back to skinny San Francisco. "No, thanks. I was just admiring them. What's that one?"
"Apple cake." She brushed hair off her face. "That one is a brandenburg, and that's raspberry oat.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“Every now and then, a mouthful of food tilted the world on its axis. This was one of them. The stew was dark and rich, meaty, herby. Thick broth and tender carrots and cubes of potato, hints of spice and aromatic vegetables. I moved my spoon through the opaque lake of gravy, imagining words that might describe it in an essay. I'd use the setting of the room, the AGA cooker in the corner, and the mullioned windows and the thatchers in their jeans.
"This is venison?" I asked and took a larger spoonful. "It's amazing."
"Thank you," Rebecca said mildly. "Have you never had it?"
"Not like this. We don't really eat it in the U.S." I tasted again, mulled the flavors: red wine, garlic, bacon, and something I couldn't quite put my finger on. "There's a hint of sweetness. Not honey, I don't think, or brown sugar."
Tony chuckled. "She'll never tell you her secrets."
"Of course I will. Red currant jam.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“And again, I realized I was wrong. Dialect and regionalities did influence the perception of class. “Huh. Right again.” He smiled. “Class does exist in America. You’re just more subtle.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“Right, the class thing here is strange. I mean, I’m American. We don’t do class.” “You don’t really believe that, do you?” Startled, I looked at him. He only looked back with his liquid black eyes. I said, “It’s not like here.” “Perhaps not. But you can’t possibly think it doesn’t exist.” “I guess.” I thought of those dinners I’d eaten, the very privilege of living in San Francisco at all, the homeless people down on Treat Avenue, the neighborhood where my mother’s house had sold for millions, the stories of people riding the train for two hours to get to work from places as distant as Stockton, people being taxed out of the homes they’d lived in for decades. “I mean, yeah, of course it does.” Thinking more, I felt a little ashamed—the country had been under siege over class for several years now. “But it’s different, don’t you think? America is essentially a meritocracy, in that you can earn your way up the ranks via education and money.” “But can you, really? University is wildly expensive, is it not? Not everyone can afford the cost.” I nodded.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“I’d never been able to get comfortable with sitting meditation, but cooking and sketching and walking gave me the same feeling I’d heard others describe. Wordlessness, focusing on the moment, letting go of the crazy voices all vying for attention.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“So instead, I did what I’d done since I was a child—I took comfort in food. Not in a binge-eating sort of way, which wasn’t focusing at all, but grounding myself in the here and now by noticing exactly what I ate. Right now, in this hotel room in front of a gas fire, the fish was fresh and sturdy beneath its crisp breading, the chips thick and expertly salted. My pint of ale was the color of walnuts, with flavor that had been developed over centuries. Salt eddied through my mouth, grounding me, and I thought of an essay M. F. K. Fisher had written about a meal she’d eaten in Paris after getting stuck on a train. It made me feel cosmopolitan rather than lonely. For the first moment since my mother died, I felt something akin to peace. Maybe I’d write about it in the morning. But for now, it was a relief to be far away from the drama of my life, with a full belly and a sense of quiet stealing over me. As I was falling asleep, my brain fancifully tried to write limericks with fish-and-chips at the center. They were incredibly clever in my compromised state, and I told myself to remember them in the morning. It was probably just as well that I didn’t.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets