Briefly A Delicious Life Quotes

The world is full of cowards she thinks. And it turns out sometimes the opposite of cowardice is playfulness.

The women that survived me! They stepped out of their houses into the daylight and if I'd had any breath I would have been breathless at the sight of them. The hands of women. The ankles of women. The voices of women as they called to each other across the square.

(...) thought of all that could be done between two women in possession of bodies, what effects could be achieved with fingers and tongues.

What are you doing here and how can I persuade you to stay?

When I was alive, I lived in a time of beautiful men. They were everywhere: big and broad and manly, managing everything mannishly, manifesting whatever they wanted and manhandling what they didn't.

That was it. The bracket of her bent leg against the stones. The way her mouth angled around the cigar in a grimace that was almost a smile. The sight of a woman in a well-tailored jacket and trousers. Unexpected, unimagined. A prickling sensation. A stomach-dropping, blood-fizzing, breath-stopping, knotted lurch-and-swoop that I recognized, by then, as the first faltering step towards falling in love.

When was the last time I had told her I loved her, was proud of her, was grateful to her for showing me what life was like when lived at length and gently?

Turn your big black eyes right on me and see me from the inside out. Put out your cigars on my lungs. Spit coffee into my mouth. Write your spidery words all over my stomach.

I had never seen anyone like her. That was the thing. No woman had ever been as definite, as robust. No woman, no man, nobody had ever been so much like themselves as she was.

I don’t want to be alone, I said. I don’t understand why I am here alone.

As my mother used to say: we had two religions; there was the Church, and then there were the men.

I understood by then that Chopin’s music was the best of him. It was where his loveliness resided.

The hands of women. The ankles of women. The voices of women as they called to each other across the square. I could have kicked myself for not realizing it before.

Now that the family had announced in absentia that they were not only foreign odd consumptive cross-dressers, but Godless foreign odd consumptive cross-dressers? Now things would be much, much worse.

The sky is turquoise, the sea is azure, the mountains are emerald, the air is heaven. Sunny, hot days; everyone in summer clothes. Guitars and singing all through the night…. Briefly, a delicious life. —Frédéric Chopin

When George stuck her head around the door and watched him work, his stomach clenched and his skin tingled. The feeling was like a phrase ending on a deceptive cadence, hovering, deliciously unresolved. There was something unsettling and adolescent about it, as though they were both teenagers and falling in love for the first time.

My name is Blanca. I died in 1473, when I was fourteen years old and have been at the Charterhouse ever since.

I was tired. I had been conscious for three hundred and seventy-nine years.

It wasn't even a lie - I don't feel well - it was really very true. She did not feel well in the world ; she did not feel well taken care of; she did not feel well loved.

I don't want to be alone, I said. I don't understand why I am here alone.

And she is aware too how very convenient it is to have found someone she wants to marry just at the moment in her life when getting married is expected of her. It is a relief not to have to marry someone for the sake of it, or to have to make a stand and marry nobody at all.

Eventually, they stepped back from one another. The smaller one readjusted his jacket and turned his head to the side. My first view of his face: plump lips, dark eyes, long lashes, and glossy black curls pinned back. Cheeks pink in the heat. Sweat on the temples. Which was when I realized that it was not a man after all. It was a woman dressed as a man. Which was the second great surprise of my morning.

Let’s see how it feels when taken at the crushing, trudging pace of ordinary life, so incredibly slow, ponderous, deadening, and with so many astonishing moments in between.

The feeling was like a phrase ending on a deceptive cadence, hovering, deliciously unresolved.

What do we call the giraffe, Solange?’ George asked, and when Solange said nothing George finished the joke: ‘Her Highness.

My little black cloud’ George would say, lopping Solange’s hair through her fingers as the child was falling asleep. It took me some time to understand this was intended as a term of endearment. Maurice was always: ‘my little cub’, ‘my bear’; Solange: ‘cloud’, ‘thunder’, ‘little tempest’. How many time do you have to call a cloud a tempest before it turns stormy?

Imagine you are about to bite into an apple. Imagine never having bitten into an apple before. The fruit at your lips is an unknown thing. It might burst like a tomato! Yield like a peach! Snap like a carrot! You have no idea about its insides: what colour or texture. You have no reason to suspect it will be cloud-white, bloodless, foamy, crisp. An apple, could be like an orange: segmented, oozy. An apple could be salty and jaw-breaking like a rock. This is what it was like for me, the first time I heard Chopin play the piano.

Shaping the mounds of dough is easiest to do with a spring-loaded ice cream scoop, although you can use two spoons or a pastry bag with a large, plain tip. 1 cup (250 ml) water ½ teaspoon coarse salt 2 teaspoons sugar 6 tablespoons (90 g) unsalted butter, cut into small chunks 1 cup (135 g) flour 4 large eggs, at room temperature ½ cup (85 g) semisweet chocolate chips ½ cup (60 g) pearl sugar (see Note) Position a rack in the upper third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Heat the water along with the salt, sugar, and butter in a medium saucepan, stirring, until the butter is melted. Remove from heat and dump in all the flour at once. Stir rapidly until the mixture is smooth and pulls away from the sides of the pan. Allow the dough to cool for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally to release the heat; then briskly beat in the eggs, one at a time, until the paste is smooth and shiny. Let cool completely to room temperature, then stir in the chocolate chips. If it’s even slightly warm, they’ll melt. Drop mounds of dough, about 2 tablespoons each, on the baking sheet, evenly spaced. Press pearl sugar crystals liberally over the top and sides of each mound. Use a lot and really press them in. Once the puffs expand, you’ll appreciate the extra effort (and sugar). Bake the chouquettes for 35 minutes, or until puffed and well browned. Serve warm or at room temperature. STORAGE: Choquettes are best eaten the same day they’re made. However, once cooled, they can be frozen in a zip-top freezer bag for up to one month. Defrost at room temperature, then warm briefly on a baking sheet in a moderate oven, until crisp.

The world is full of cowards, she thinks, and it turns out that sometimes the opposite of cowardice is playfulness.

And yes, the idea of wifeness, this toady disturbance in her mind, distracts her when she wants to get on with writing and thinking and reading. It leaves so little room for the rest of her.

Her periods stopped. But still she could not bring herself to eat, in case that one piece of bread, that drop of oil, that scrap of chicken, would be the bite to bring the blood back.

He would close his eyes. He would press his fingers to his temples. He would rearrange his arms and legs around him as though they were the unruly fronds of a plant. Nothing worked. Sometimes his fingers wouldn’t do what he wanted on the keys; they were sluggish and slow, and those were the worst days. Even the air felt abrasive.

There was something unsettling and adolescent about it, as though they were both teenagers and falling in love for the first time.

She spent so much time at her desk, working and smoking and staring at the garden through the window, that she looked out of place sitting anywhere else.

She had imagined fresh, wholesome food; less cream than they ate in France, less sugar, more fish. She had imagined that their bodies would strengthen and unfurl like shoots towards the sun, and that everything would be easy: her writing, her children, being in love with Chopin.

She feels trapped by her body, her still-swollen, pudgy belly and the perineal tear that bleeds afresh whenever she moves and makes her scared to pee. Her milk has just come in and her breasts feel weighty and thrumming, hard as stale bread; her shirt is drenched and sticky. She is all seepage, bloat, and frayed edges. She can go nowhere. She can seduce nobody.

What is desire, without a body to have it in? All I can say is that to me it was like the kind of hunger people get in dreams. It was formless, gutless, all-consuming because unconfined. It had no edges.

Unexpected, unimagined. A prickling sensation. A stomach-dropping, blood-fizzing, breath-stopping, knotted lurch-and-swoop that I recognized, by then, as the first faltering step towards falling in love.

Which meant that I was alone and completely unprepared when I burst into Cell Three to find Chopin at his piano and the rooms full of a sound that, in all my hundreds of years, I had never heard.

she started dreaming a lot about Paris: about the pink-gray sky, thick and soft like felt.

The storm had cried itself to sleep, and what remained in the subsequent days were crisp blue skies and a slightly shell-shocked peace, as though we had been granted a reprieve from winter.

For the first time in my life, I wasn't thinking about what would happen in the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years to come. I was right there in the moment, my world finally, albeit briefly, complete. And I was happy. Deliriously, deliciously happy.