Recipe for Persuasion Quotes

“Happiness seeps into me when you're around, Rico. Without invitation, without notice, joy finds me. Being around you is being alive, it's breathing, it's home.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“One thing he'd say about her- she blushed like no one else he'd ever met. Her gorgeous skin went from warm brown to an almost fiery pink. It didn't help that Rico knew she was blushing with her entire body right now. He had loved to chase that blush across her skin.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“You know how we men are. If we imprint on you young, you've got us forever. To do with us as you please."
She smiled at Zee so sweetly that Rico braced himself for what was coming. "Or you men want us to believe that, so we can never let you go and you can use our dependence to do as you please."
Zee looked delighted. "Are you saying men are more manipulative in relationships than women? That would go against the popular opinion, now wouldn't it?"
Ashna mirrored his delight. "The popular opinion that men have floated through the years?"
"I know a lot of women who agree that women are more manipulative than men."
"Just like you've heard women say women gossip more, or pull each other down, or only feel loved when men shower them with material gifts. Patriarchal opinions that centuries of being called 'the weaker sex' and being given only the domestic space and our own bodies to claim our power with have had us internalize?”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“He tried to catch her eye, but all he got was the slightest nod before she looked away. He had no idea how he knew there was gratitude in that nod, but he did. The loose lock of hair that always seemed to escape the confines of her bun fell across her cheek.
I want to be your hair.
How many times had he said that to her? Not once had she needed to ask him what he meant. Her hair- midnight spun into strands- was always kissing her cheeks, playing with her collarbones, caressing her skin.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“Ah, fresh young love! It was like the smell of cumin roasting in butter: you couldn't hide it for anything.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“Growing up, we were surrounded by stories of women being married off without their consent, and it was always about how they compromised, reconciled, and found love in the end. It was romanticized so much. What an abhorrent thing to tell someone — that your love isn’t where your interest lie, or that your parents know what’s best for you better than you do.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“You deserve to do what’s best for you.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“What do you remember most about what your pai put in his lamb chops?"
"I think it was basically salt, pepper, and garlic." He squeezed his eyes shut and focused so hard that not dropping a kiss on his earnestly pursed mouth was the hardest thing. His eyes opened, bright with memory. "Of course. Mint."
"That's perfect. Since we're only allowed only five tools, simple is good."
"My mãe always made rice and potatoes with it. How about we make lamb chops and a biryani-style pilaf?"
Ashna blinked. Since when was Rico such a foodie?
He shrugged but his lips tugged to one side in his crooked smile. "What? I live in London. Of course Indian is my favorite cuisine."
Tossing an onion at him, she asked him to start chopping, and put the rice to boil.
Then she turned to the lamb chops. The automatic reflex to follow Baba's recipe to within an inch of its life rolled through her. But when she ignored it, the need to hyperventilate didn't follow. Next to her Rico was fully tuned in to her body language, dividing his focus between following the instructions she threw out and the job at hand.
As he'd talked about his father's chops, she'd imagined exactly how she wanted them to taste. An overtone of garlic and lemon and an undertone of mint. The rice would be simple, in keeping with the Brazilian tradition, but she'd liven it up with fried onions, cashew nuts, whole black cardamom, cloves, bay leaves, and cinnamon stick. All she wanted was to create something that tasted like Rico's childhood, combined with their future together, and it felt like she was flying.
Just like with her teas, she knew exactly what she wanted to taste and she knew exactly how to layer ingredients to coax out those flavors, those feelings. It was her and that alchemy and Rico's hands flying to follow instructions and help her make it happen.
"There's another thing we have to make," she said. Rico raised a brow as he stirred rice into the spice-infused butter. "I want to make tea. A festive chai."
He smiled at her, heat intensifying his eyes.
Really? Talking about tea turned him on? Wasn't the universe just full of good news today.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“This isn't the first time you two are meeting, is it?"
He didn't answer that. That wasn't his to tell. Ashna would tell her family and China in her own time, if at all. He just had to do this.
China dropped into a chair, then jumped up again. A whole new wave of understanding suffusing her face. "That's why you asked to be on the show. Oh God, you're Frederick Wentworthing her."
He shouldn't know what that meant but he totally did. "I'm half agony, half hope, Ms. Dashwood." He tried to shrug, but she looked in his eyes and her whole face turned into a giant awwww.
She pressed her hands into her face. "You can't do that to me. You can't quote Persuasion to me."
It was his mother's favorite book. It's where his name had come from. "Listen. I'm not going to force her to do anything. I'm just going to ask, and if she says no, I won't pressure her. I promise."
"Why do I get the feeling you're pretty sure she won't say no?"
"As I said, half agony, half hope.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“Problems were patient. They always waited you out.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“The night you were born, I remember having a vision, a vision like this, of us with this feeling in our hearts. Like anything was possible because we were loved and free. That vision filled me with so much hope, I scratched out your name on the birth certificate and put down the only word that could describe how I felt. Ashna.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“Don't you think something about her is different? More responsive, more open than she's ever been?"
"Ashna has always had too vulnerable a heart, Shobi. That's been the problem. She feels everyone's pain and internalizes it, and wants to take it away. I think the reason she's had such a hard time with you is that she didn't know what to do with yours. She finds your rage at the world too daunting. She blames herself for it.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“She had never been the most social person. Rico hadn't either. They'd been two self-contained teenagers who had somehow cracked each other's shells and further destroyed each other's ability to need other people. This version of her, the one who was so acutely aware of people's reaction to her, made him want to break her loose.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“You know that I'm the owner of Curried Dreams, right? I inherited it as his wife." Her parents had never gotten divorced. Ashna remembered how guilty she had felt every time she prayed that they would. "I think it's time we sell it."
Ashna dumped the paper towels in the garbage, hands shaking. The urge to press down, crush the garbage until it shrank to the bottom of the bin pushed inside her. "That's a new low, even for you." She gave in and jammed her hand into the garbage, pressing it down until it crushed and folded and smashed.
"You already hate me. I might as well do what's right for you and risk you hating me more."
"How is forcing me to give up my livelihood right for me?" She washed her hands to keep from shoving the garbage again.
"If it weren't for Curried Dreams you would actually be looking for and doing something you enjoyed. You'd get out from that dark place your father thrust you into."
Ashna was shaking now. All she wanted was to walk away. To crawl into bed. To get away from Shobi.
The habit of walking away from things must be a hard one to break.
Go to hell, Frederico Silva!
"Curried Dreams is not a dark place. I can turn it around. I'm close to doing it."
"You're not going to win that show. You don't even like being a chef! You can't win without passion."
"Thanks, Mom. And not all of us are selfish enough to put ourselves and our damn passion before everything else!"
Shobi gasped and Ashna sucked in her lips.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“Winning the Padma Shri was never my goal. Helping people was."
"Wow, so that's the part you decided to address in what I said?" Every single time her mother showed her where Ashna fell on her list of priorities it hurt as though it were the first time. How could she be so weak?
Her mother sighed. "Don't you at least want to try to understand what my life's been like?"
"I do understand. I was there, remember? Watching from eight thousand miles away." Because you left me. Over and over again.
"I was forced into a marriage with your father."
Not this again. "Thanks for sharing that. After overhearing your fights my entire childhood, you think I didn't figure that out myself?" She had heard those words innumerable times. "You didn't want Baba, you didn't want me. I know. You got stuck with us, and you did what you had to do to make sure you didn't lose yourself, to break the chains, to find your voice. All the things. Now look, Padma Shri! Boom! It all worked out. I'm proud of you and everything, but I'm not the 'Economic Status of Rural Women.' You can't fix me by putting the right systems in place." It was a little late for that.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“There's still time. The first episode hasn't aired yet. You can ask for any other chef and they'll give you what you want. I don't think I can do this."
"The habit of walking away from things must be a hard one to break," he said, when the last thing he wanted to think about right now was that particular moment from their past.
She's just a girl I dated in high school.
Her long, incredibly delicate fingers squeezed her temples, her jaw clenched, every inch of her screamed how badly she did not want to be doing this with him.
If she wanted to walk away, she was going to have to be the one to do it. Again. "As for how I behaved with DJ," he said when the silence had stretched out long enough that he knew she wasn't going to respond, "it was an honest mistake." None of this was about DJ.
"Dropping a knife from shock, that's an honest mistake," she said, the new shell she'd grown melting like ice around pine needles after a winter storm. "Being rude to someone because you're angry with someone else? That's just being spoiled and self-centered.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“Extra bitter melon was never an issue. The unpopular vegetable was a favorite with the Rajes, none of whom were daunted by the bitterness that sat atop the other, more complex underlying flavors. She would take some over to her aunt and uncle's house later.
Her grandmother could make magic with bitter melon, stuffing it with fried onions and then frying the entire thing to a buttery, salty crunch. Baba's recipe at the restaurant was derived from Aji's recipe, he'd made it richer with cashews added to the stuffing and a creamy onion sauce. Decadent, the way all of Baba's versions of traditional recipes were. Ashna could make that version in her sleep, but she preferred the taste of the one her grandmother made.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“I can never drink chai anyone else makes. You've ruined me for substandard chai."
Ashna smiled. Most people did murder tea. They didn't understand how spices interacted with leaves and basically just threw stuff together and called it a blend. Some even had the gall to call it "tea" when there was no tea in it.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“When we first met, he was the only person I knew who wanted me to be me. By the time we found our way back to each other, I had become a person who could only be me, no matter what anyone else wanted.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“People who have no empathy for refugees are soulless. No one who’s forced out of their home has any interest in anything but embracing the land that gives them another chance. It’s been proven over and over again, that refugees—and their children—go on to do great things for the countries that become their new homes.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“Shame had a way of multiplying when other people saw it. It made you naked and gross.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“It had been six hours since Ashna had seen Rico, but it felt like a lifetime. She missed him something fierce. The worry in his eyes when she'd left that morning, the determined hope, had been burning inside her. The fact that it hadn't occurred to him to push her to stay or to try to figure things out for her made her want to climb into his arms and never let go.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“She soaked up his taste. Sunshine would taste like this. A fresh summer stream with a hint of melting sugar. Crisp and sweet.
She wanted to bottle it up, blend it into a tea, drink from him until the day she died.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“These are good." Rico popped an extra piece in his mouth.
"As good as the ones they sold at your fiera livre?" As soon as she said it, they both froze. This was all on camera. At least she wasn't holding a knife.
"No." Rico smiled at the camera. "Better."
The skip of joy in her heart brought with it a shadow of fear, but she ignored it and grabbed square black platters and started to plate the bright white pancakes in delicate quarter folds to form a clover. She handed spoons to Rico and he poured doce de leite into them and placed them next to the pancakes.
They were done a good two minutes before the rest of contestants, but they would still have to act like they were rushing at the end because it made for better television.
"It looks a little plain," Rico said, taking in everyone else's workstations, where everything from empanadas to elephant ears and patajones (Danny, naturally) were being tossed up. "Should I cut up some strawberries? It could use some fruit, and maybe whipped cream?"
He was right. It needed something. Plain would definitely get them hammered by the judges. But not strawberries and whipped cream. Not anything so predictable.
Ashna raced to the pantry, picked up a mango, and tossed it at Rico. Then without waiting to see if he would catch it, she turned to grab some saffron and ran back to their station.
"Can you dice the mango?" Before the question was even out of her mouth, he was slicing.
DJ called out the one-minute warning.
Ashna pinched out a fat clump of saffron into a metal spoon, mixed in a few drops of milk, and held it over the fire. The saffron dissolved into the milk, turning it orange, and despite the smells from all the workstations, the aroma of saffron permeated the air.
DJ started to count down the last ten seconds.
Ashna drizzled the saffron milk onto the four spoons of doce de leite just as Rico arranged the mango at the center of each plate.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“When her parents screamed at each other in front of the whole family, in front of her cousins, she had learned not to care about the shame. This had been different. Rico saw her as strong. With Rico she got to be self-possessed, like her mother. Droll and humorous, like her father. She got to be a version of herself unstained by irreparable pathos, because he gave her the gift of not coloring his vision with sympathy like everyone else in her life.
It had meant everything. Especially when all the stories of his childhood had felt so wholesome, his parents' love for each other and him so undamaged.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“Have you eaten dinner? I made some varan bhaat."
Now she felt stupid. Boiled rice and dal was the only thing she knew how to cook. But like her, Ashna had loved the simple comfort food as a child.
Maybe it was Shobi's imagination, but a sparkle broke through the weariness in Ashna's eyes. "Varan bhaat?" But she got a hold of herself. "I didn't have ghee in the house."
Shobi went to the kitchen and Ashna followed her with her usual tentativeness.
"I made some." Shobi popped the two bowls she had mixed into the microwave. "Ghee, now that I know how to make. I used to love the smell when our cook made it when I was little. So she showed me how to. Of course, she used to churn the butter from the cream first; I just walked down to the store and bought butter." Shobi put the bowl of rice and lentils mixed in with ghee and fresh lemon juice in front of Ashi.
For the next few minutes- the first peaceful minutes she'd shared with her daughter since she'd arrived- the two of them ate, letting the sticky, wholesome goodness melt on their tongues and stick to their palates and fill their mouths with that internal hug of a cherished comfort food.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“What was wrong with people? Ashna didn't understand this obsession with other people's lives. Jonah pulled up Twitter and Instagram on his tablet and waved it about, parroting all the hashtags she and Rico now were: #knifegate #churrosolimp, and the one that made Jonah the giddiest: #Ashico, which when said out loud sounded far too much like the Hindi word ashiquo which, disastrously enough, meant "lovers.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“He grew up in Rio de Janeiro. So, it could be so many things. Such a rich tradition of comfort foods. Maybe not something entirely traditional. Umm... churros?" She said it exactly the way he had taught her to say it, many moons ago, while feeding the crisp-on-the-outside, pillowy-on-the-inside confection into her mouth and then tasting the sticky sweetness on her lips.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“Next up is Chef Ashna Raje and her partner, the greatest striker in the history of football, Frederico Silva."
The audience went wild, their share of applause noticeably louder than everyone else's. DJ made a production out of waiting for the applause to die down without seeming like a hack. The network had done well with their choice of host. The man had a deep, sophisticated voice and a London accent that moved comfortably between posh and working class. He grinned at Rico with the friendliness of someone Rico had not been an arse to just recently.
The person who had provoked him enough to make an arse out of himself turned to him and seemed to read exactly how guilty he was feeling. That of all things seemed to loosen out the knots she'd been tied up in since they had arrived at the studio today.
"Bonus points for calling it football, mate," Rico said, and the crowd booed playfully.
"And by football they both mean soccer," Ashna added. "This is America, guys!"
The crowd went nuts.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion

“You'll be fine," she said to Rico when they got back, because he was still studying her and trying to make sense of her bizarre swings. "Cooking eggs is a standard test of basic cooking skill."
"I know I'll be fine," he said, the full blast of his focus mapping her relief. The emeralds in his eyes were too bright. The way they had been that first time they'd met under the bleachers. The need to see what no one else cared to see inside her, intense and naked. It had disarmed her then.
Today, it infuriated her. Made her brain forget the camera. Made her hands fly. She broke the eggs in a clean one-handed crack, whipped them ruthlessly into a thick froth, chopped the onions, cilantro, and green chilies in an unrelentingly brutal rhythm. All without breaking a sweat or sparing him a glance.
With minutes to spare from the mere twenty they were given, she turned out a fluffy and perfectly moist omelet with garlic-infused oil rolled into a crisp, flaky paratha.
Until they stood in front of the judges, she had forgotten where she was, who she was with.
The only place the livid energy inside her seemed to have manifested itself was in what the judges declared "abject underseasoning."
This made Ashna smile. When she looked at Rico, he was having the same reaction. For one quick meeting of their eyes, the ridiculously overdramatic statement joined them together with shared humor. His lips tilted up on one side. For the first time since they'd lined up to hear the challenge, she took a full breath.”
― Sonali Dev, Recipe for Persuasion