Garlic Quotes

I'm gonna kill him," Eve said, or at least that was what it sounded like filtered through the pillow. Stake him right in the heart, shove garlic up his ass, and-and-" And what?" (Michael) When did you get home?" Claire demanded. Apparently just in time to hear my funeral plans. I especially like the garlic up the ass. It's...different.

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.

Fred and George, however, found all this very funny. They went out of their way to march ahead of Harry down the corridors, shouting, "Make way for the Heir of Slytherin, seriously evil wizard coming through ...... Percy was deeply disapproving of this behavior. "It is not a laughing matter," he said coldly. "Oh, get out of the way, Percy," said Fred. "Harry's in a hurry." "Yeah, he's off to the Chamber of Secrets for a cup of tea with his fanged servant," said George, chortling. Ginny didn't find it amusing either. "Oh, don't," she wailed every time Fred asked Harry loudly who he was planning to attack next, or when George pretended to ward Harry off with a large clove of garlic when they met.

Garlic is divine. Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.

Poppy: Um, can we cross running water? James: Sure. And we can walk into people's homes without being invited, and roll in garlic if we don't mind losing friends.

If stakes and garlic were the top two things that could kill a vampire, ninth grade gym was a close third.

There is a crucifix, a few cloves of garlic, a wooden stake, a hammer, a blob of Silly Putty, and a pocketknife. “You do realize these people aren’t vampires, right?” I say when Sam walks back in. “Yeah, but you never know. They’re probably crazy, like you said.” “And even if we were hunting vampires, what the hell is the Silly Putty for?” He shrugs. “Just want to be prepared.

Not me, paranoia's the garlic in life's kitchen, right, you can never have too much.

Where's your kilt?" "How about this," he said in a low voice. "You don't ask me about haggis and bagpipes, and I won't ask you about garlic and Goodfellas.

The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.

Vlad decided that teachers' ideas were a lot like bunches of garlic-intriguing from afar, but up close sadly sickening and, if you weren't careful, DEADLY.

Cass had a few points but, really, a vampire? Who believed in such a myth? What was Cass suggesting anyway? That I grab my rosary and head for the nearest church begging for holy water? Line my door and windows with salt? Sleep with a wooden stake under my pillow? Hang garlic bulbs from my bedroom door? Why was I even considering these options?

Our movements through time and space seem somehow trivial compared to a heap of boiled meat in broth, the smell of saffron, garlic, fishbones and Pernod.

I was tired of well-meaning folks, telling me it was time I got over being heartbroke. When somebody tells you that, a little bell ought to ding in your mind. Some people don't know grief from garlic grits. There's somethings a body ain't meant to get over. No I'm not suggesting you wallow in sorrow, or let it drag on; no I am just saying it never really goes away. (A death in the family) is like having a pile of rocks dumped in your front yard. Every day you walk out and see them rocks. They're sharp and ugly and heavy. You just learn to live around them the best way you can. Some people plant moss or ivy; some leave it be. Some folks take the rocks one by one, and build a wall.

To dream a garden and then to plant it is an act of independence and even defiance to the greater world.

If you thought eighth grade was tough, try it with fangs and a fear of garlic.

Maybe it was a good thing that Bones was putting Don's remains away instead of me. With my current emotional state, I'd probably think the only safe place for his ashes was tucked inside my clothes next to the garlic and weed.

you can run out of garlic, you can't really run out of music

So, the wooden stake through the heart thing is apparently a myth, but you can be killed by fire. Anything else?" "Should I be concerned that one of your first questions is how to kill me?" Her jaw dropped. "What? No! I didn't mean... I was just curious." He snorted. "Well you can remain so." "What about the sun?" she asked. "Extra toasty?" "I'm not going to burst into flames, but I avoid tanning beds." "Silver?" "Some of my favorite cufflinks." "Garlic?" "Please," he sneered. "I'm Italian.

And if you worry that not finishing the food on your plate is a slap in the face of all the hungry people everywhere, you are not living in reality. The truth is that you either throw the food out or you throw it in, but either way it turns to waste. World hunger will not be solved by finishing the garlic mashed potatoes on your plate.

Misha didn’t appear taken by her charm. He eyed her as if she’s asked him to make her a garlic pizza in the shape of a cross. I laughed: I couldn’t help it. Leave it to Shayna to try to befriend the guy who’ll probably suck us dry by sundown.

He methodically basted the dark skin of the Alsatian, which he had stuffed with garlic and herbs. "One rule in life", he murmured to himself. "If you can smell garlic, everything is all right".

When a person has lived generously and fought fiercely, she deserves more than sadness at the end.

Viv, I just made you wild-caught Alaskan salmon baked with mango chutney, on a bed of garlic red potatoes and arugula. While talking about an Audrey Hepburn movie. I think you are maybe falling in love with me.

Sometimes things are a change for the better and the worse at the same time, like the internet. Or the electric keyboard. Or pre-chopped garlic. Or the theory of relativity.

I'm having a cheeseburger," Anna said. "With fries smothered in vinegar and salt." "I told you I wouldn't kiss you again. You don't have to poison your mouth." "Very funny. What are you having?" "Something with onions and garlic.

I noticed there was garlic above the doorframe. Edwart held a stake in one hand and a 'Team Jacob' shirt in the other.

There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes.

The Harold Herald, alive with news of the war, even printed an extra edition the next day, and among the news of the front page, the girls discovered that Minister Fairweller had been wounded. Clover, so tenderhearted, cried. "Oh,he's probably all right," said Bramble. "It would take a lot to kill him. Like garlic and a stake through the heart." Clover still cried. That was Clover for you.

One rule in life", he murmured to himself. "If you can smell garlic, everything is alright.

Or you can broil the meat, fry the onions, stew the garlic in the red wine...and ask me to supper. I'll not care, really, even if your nose is a little shiny, so long as you are self-possessed and sure that wolf or no wolf, your mind is your own and your heart is another's and therefore in the right place.

My idea of a perfect day is a frozen custard at Shake Shack and a walk in the park. (Followed by a Lactaid.) My idea of a perfect night is a good play and dinner at Orso. (But no garlic, or I won't be able to sleep.) The other day I found a bakery that bakes my favorite childhood cake, and it was everything I remembered: it made my week.

I'll keep it," she said. "Then, when you get back, after you and the dark one are done making out and planning a future filled with blond-haired, green-eyed, pigment-challeneged rug rats, I'll bring it over and you can add it to your scrapbook, right before you start cooking me dinner. I like vegetarian lasagna with cottage cheese instead of ricotta." "Gwen?" "And don't forget the mushrooms. Garlic bread, too, please. That is, as long as your vampire lover doesn't object." "I want to say thank you," Isobel said. "For... everything." "No," Gwen said. "Thank you for the delicious dinner. I can almost taste the baklava you and Darth Vader will be making for dessert. Something tells me you're gonna have to look that one up, though.

Holy water, a couple cloves of garlic, vials of salt, and iron fillings filled the basket, intended to be door prizes for anything that showed up in an attempt to suck my blood, carry me off to faerieland, or sell me stale cookies.

She smells of her cooking and the perfume Eau d'Hadrien. My mother wore it, too. She used to cook, like Lili. Our house smelled of garlic and thyme instead of sadness.

Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.

..Though I have to say nothing beats Type O mixed with a little cannabis." A muscle worked in David's jaw. "You're stoned?" "Not Really," I said. "Though I do have a strange craving for pizza. Extra garlic.

In those days you could identify a person's nationality by smell. Lying on her back with eyes closed, Desdemona could detect the telltale oniony aroma of a Hungarian woman on her right, and the raw-meat smell of an Armenian on her left. (And they, in turn, could peg Desdemona as a Hellene by her aroma of garlic and yogurt.)

Myth: Garlic repels vampires. Truth: Try telling that to my dad.

Garlic is as good as ten mothers.

I had rather live With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far, Than feed on cates and have him talk to me In any summerhouse in Christendom.

But, look, it is good to have a dream so long as you do not let it gnaw at the substance of your present. I have seen men consumed by their dreams, and it is a sour business. If you cling too tightly to a dream—a poodle bitch or a personal sausage chef or whatever—then you miss the felicity of your heart beating and the smell of the grass growing and the sounds lizards make when you run through the neighborhood with our friend. Your dream should be like a favorite old bone that you savor and cherish and chew upon gently. Then, rather than stealing from you a wasted sigh or the life of an idle hour, it nourishes you, and you become strangely contented by nostalgia for a possible future, so juicy with possibility and redolent of sautéed garlic and decadent slabs of bacon that you feel full when you’ve eaten nothing. And then, one fine day when the sun smiles upon your snout, then the time is right, you bite down hard. The dream is yours. And then you chew on the next one.

Is he about to kiss me? Did he eat garlic too or was I the only one? 'Cause if Ric didn't eat garlic then my breath's gonna stink and he'll think... Oh for fuck sake, shut up internal dialogue!

Let's make no mistake about this: The American Dream starts with the neighborhoods. If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living. To sit on the front steps--whether it's a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city--and to talk to our neighborhoods is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not-quite living color. ... And I hardly need to tell you that in the 19- or 24-inch view of the world, cleanliness has long since eclipsed godliness. Soon we'll all smell, look, and actually be laboratory clean, as sterile on the inside as on the out. The perfect consumer, surrounded by the latest appliances. The perfect audience, with a ringside seat to almost any event in the world, without smell, without taste, without feel--alone and unhappy in the vast wasteland of our living rooms. I think that what we actually need, of course, is a little more dirt on the seat of our pants as we sit on the front stoop and talk to our neighbors once again, enjoying the type of summer day where the smell of garlic travels slightly faster than the speed of sound.

I decided to make spaghetti for lunch again. Not that I was the least bit hungry. But I couldn't just go on sitting on the sofa, waiting for the phone to ring. I had to move my body, to begin working toward some goal. I put water in a pot, turned on the gas, and until it boiled I would make tomato sauce while listening to an FM broadcast. The radio was playing an unaccompanied violin sonata by Bach. The performance itself was excellent, but there was something annoying about it. I didn't know whether this was the fault of the violinist or of my own present state of mind, but I turned off the music and went on cooking in silence. I heated the olive oil, put garlic in the pan, and added minced onions. When these began to brown, I added the tomatoes that I had chopped and strained. It was good to be cutting things and frying things like this. It gave me a sense of accomplishment that I could feel in my hands. I liked the sounds and the smells.

They were looking after themselves, living with rigid economy; and there was no greater proof of their friendship than the way their harmony withstood their very grave differences in domestic behaviour. In Jack's opinion Stephen was little better than a slut: his papers, odd bits of dry, garlic'd bread, his razors and small-clothes lay on and about his private table in a miserable squalor; and from the appearance of the grizzled wig that was now acting as a tea-cosy for his milk-saucepan, it was clear that he had breakfasted on marmalade. Jack took off his coat, covered his waistcoat and breeches with an apron, and carried the dishes into the scullery. 'My plate and saucer will serve again,' said Stephen. 'I have blown upon them. I do wish, Jack,' he cried, 'that you would leave that milk-saucepan alone. It is perfectly clean. What more sanitary, what more wholesome, than scalded milk?

You are much braver than you think.

Scrub mussels in spring water. Dump them into boiling water with salt. Boil five minutes. Remove and cool in the juice. Take out meat. Eat by dipping in acorn paste flavored with a smudge of garlic, and green apples.

I opened the paper bag and frowned. "You left me a garlic bagel?" "Last awake, last choice," Alex said. "My breath is going to be terrible." "More terrible," Alex corrected. "Well, that's fine. I'm not kissing you. Are you kissing him, T.J.?" "Wasn't planing on it." T.J. popped the last of his bagel in his mouth and grinned. "I - I didn't say anything about -" I stammered. "I didn't mean ..." My face felt like it was crawling with fire ants. "Whatever. T.J., why are you wearing those glasses, anyway?" I'm good at subtly changing the conversation like that when I'm embarrassed. It's a gift.

Never throw away squeezed lemon, but keep them for the day by the sink. Then you can use them to remove fish, onion or garlic smells from your fingers. Or you can stick them on your elbows while you are reading a book, to soften and whiten your skin.

A boorish laborer of some type emerged from a crowd of timid Coke-drinking men. He moved toward us with the wide menacing stance of a wrestler, black glistening hair, jutting like straight shards from beneath a Pashtun cap. Strong as an acre of garlic. He stared at me with an undignified glimmer in his eye that I wished wasn't there.

The summer has seized you, as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw lemons as large as your desk-side globe- that miniature map of the world- and I could mention, too, the market stalls of mushrooms and garlic bugs all engorged. Or I even think of the orchard next door, where the berries are done and the apples are beginning to swell. And once, with our first backyard, I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans we couldn’t eat.

Like the garlic mustard in my garden and the roses on my fence, love has a funny way of blooming after years of being buried.

She didn’t trust people who didn’t like garlic, especially big fried pieces.

Garlic is the catsup of intellectuals.

Oh God, now she couldn’t remember why she’d ever left him. She needed him. More than air or sunlight and beaches, definitely more than garlic.

Keep it simple, keep it tasty. Salt, pepper and garlic. Shallot another day, lemon grass for nextweek. Nutmeg and cinnamon every now and then.

How did Heaven come into all of this? Heaven was life, not death. Heaven was a woman holding your head in the crook of her arm and looking down at you. Heaven was a warm hand on your cheek and the smell of soup with garlic on the fire.

Beyond the table, there is an altar, with candles lit for Billie Holiday and Willa Carter and Hypatia and Patsy Cline. Next to it, an old podium that once held a Bible, on which we have repurposed an old chemistry handbook as the Book of Lilith. In its pages is our own liturgical calendar: Saint Clementine and All Wayfarers; Saints Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt, observed in the summer with blueberries to symbolize the sapphire ring; the Vigil of Saint Juliette, complete with mints and dark chocolate; Feast of the Poets, during which Mary Oliver is recited over beds of lettuce, Kay Ryan over a dish of vinegar and oil, Audre Lorde over cucumbers, Elizabeth Bishop over some carrots; The Exaltation of Patricia Highsmith, celebrated with escargots boiling in butter and garlic and cliffhangers recited by an autumn fire; the Ascension of Frida Khalo with self-portraits and costumes; the Presentation of Shirley Jackson, a winter holiday started at dawn and ended at dusk with a gambling game played with lost milk teeth and stones. Some of them with their own books; the major and minor arcana of our little religion.

It seemed like a magical city, floating on the lagoon as if conjured by an enchanter's wand. I sat in the meadow and stared at it, picking meadow flowers from around my feet- clover and daisies and wild garlic- and making myself a wreath.

Everything you have ever read about vampires - most of it is inaccurate or downright false. We are not beautiful, we don't turn into bats, we don't shrivel up in the sunlight and we are most definitely not afraid of something as fickle as garlic.

Ok. Listen. I not know where all you morons come from but holy water no hurt Bigfoot. Garlic and Crucifix also no. Fire, Pitchfork, Silver Bullet OK. Cryptonite do nothing. It not even real. Please stop sending letters asking "What you vulnerability? What Bigfoot?" Like I tell. What next me bank account number? Why not you invest time in moving out of parent basement? Maybe have sex or something. Yes I be talking to you Steve. Youuu! Stalking is a crime Steve.

Pestom madam." "Yes, Floote, that! Brilliant. Full of garlic." To illustrate her point, she took another mouthful before continuing. "Seems they put garlic in positively everything here. Absolutely fantastic.

A thousand years ago the Chinese had an entirely codified kitchen while the French were still gnawing on bones. Chopsticks have been around since the fourth century B.C. Forks didn't show up in England until 1611, and even then they weren't meant for eating but just to hold the meat still while you hacked at it with your knife.

Seriously. Fifteen percent or I'm slipping garlic powder into your next Bloody Mary." He fixed me with a scowl that could launch a thousand horror novels. I smiled. Muttering murderous things under his breath,he pulled out his wallet and handed over the money. "Come back soon," I chirped, beaming as I went back to the cash register. I might not have Tasey on me regularly, but I could still best vamps.

Our immigrant plant teachers offer a lot of different models for how not to make themselves welcome on a new continent. Garlic mustard poisons the soil so that native species will die. Tamarisk uses up all the water. Foreign invaders like loosestrife, kudzu, and cheat grass have the colonizing habit of taking over others’ homes and growing without regard to limits. But Plantain is not like that. Its strategy was to be useful, to fit into small places, to coexist with others around the dooryard, to heal wounds. Plantain is so prevalent, so well integrated, that we think of it as native. It has earned the name bestowed by botanists for plants that have become our own. Plantain is not indigenous but “naturalized.” This is the same term we use for the foreign-born when they become citizens in our country.

A sudden cloud formation of birds was swallowed up by the moon, and he was just as suddenly penned in by four walls—the demons’ pen.

I will rip your balls off and sauté them in garlic butter with basil and ground pepper. I will then add a garnish of shaved orange peels and a side of fresh-cut sliced beets misted with lemon juice. I will beautifully plate it and enjoy a glass of white wine with it while dressed in a tuxedo. It will be a Michelin three-star meal and you will not be invited to join me!

Since we're into witches, let's swing by and check out this Isis at Spirit Quest." She slid her eyes right. Well, maybe she'd rag just a little. "You can probably buy a talisman or some herbs," she said solemnly. "You know, to ward off evil." Peabody shifted in her seat. Feeling foolish wasn't nearly as bad as worrying about being cursed. "Don't think I won't." "After we deal with Isis, we can grab a pizza sub -- with plenty of garlic." "Garlic's for vampires." "Oh. We can have Roarke get us a couple of his antique guns. With silver bullets." "Werewolves, Dallas." Amused at both of them now, Peabody rolled her eyes. "A lot of good you're going to do if we have to defend ourselves against witchcraft." "What does it to witches, then?" "I don't know," Peabody admitted. "But I'm damn sure going to find out.

Claudio Bianchi did write poetry [...] He had no vanity about this, no fantasies of literary celebrity; he simply took pleasure putting words in order, exactly as he laid out seedlings in the spring, and tasting them afterward, as he tasted fresh new scallions or ripe tomatoes, or smelled mint or garlic on his hands.

Oh, fish sauce! How we missed it, dear Aunt, how nothing tasted right without it, how we longed for the grand cru of Phu Quoc Island and its vats brimming with the finest vintage of pressed anchovies! This pungent liquid condiment of the darkest sepia hue was much denigrated by foreigners for its supposedly horrendous reek, lending new meaning to the phrase "there's something fishy aroud here," for we were the fishy ones. We used fish sauce the way Transylvanian villagers were cloves of garlic to ward off vampires, in our case to establish a perimeter with those Westerners who could never understand that was truly fishy was the nauseating stench of cheese. What was fermented fish compared to curdled milk?

It was a meal that we shall never forget; more accurately, it was several meals that we shall never forget, because it went beyond the gastronomic frontiers of anything we had ever experienced, both in quantity and length. It started with homemade pizza - not one, but three: anchovy, mushroom, and cheese, and it was obligatory to have a slice of each. Plates were then wiped with pieces torn from the two-foot loaves in the middle of the table, and the next course came out. There were pates of rabbit, boar, and thrush. There was a chunky, pork-based terrine laced with marc. There were saucissons spotted with peppercorns. There were tiny sweet onions marinated in a fresh tomato sauce. Plates were wiped once more and duck was brought in... We had entire breasts, entire legs, covered in a dark, savory gravy and surrounded by wild mushrooms. We sat back, thankful that we had been able to finish, and watched with something close to panic as plates were wiped yet again and a huge, steaming casserole was placed on the table. This was the specialty of Madame our hostess - a rabbit civet of the richest, deepest brown - and our feeble requests for small portions were smilingly ignored. We ate it. We ate the green salad with knuckles of bread fried in garlic and olive oil, we ate the plump round crottins of goat's cheese, we ate the almond and cream gateau that the daughter of the house had prepared. That night, we ate for England.

I need bruschetta (that's "broo-SKET-uh," not "brushetter," a slender piece of ciabatta toasted and brushed with garlic and oil and covered in fresh tomato and basil-- the chunks inevitably fall off the bread and the olive oil runs over your lips and down your chin. The whole thing is delicious, deeply physical and delightfully undignified, and a woman who can eat a real bruschetta is a woman you can love and who can love you. Someone who pushes the thing away because it's messy is never going to cackle at you toothlessly across the living room of your retirement cottage or drag you back from your sixth heart attack by sheer furious affection. Never happen. You need a woman who isn't afraid of a faceful of olive oil for that)

Alexis grabbed his arm. "Tom Jones? Wow, I totally love Tom Jones. He's like quintessential Vegas—over the top and indecent fun. Let me just go grab a pair of underwear to throw at him and we'll be all set." Over his undead body. If anyone was getting her underwear tossed in his face, it was going to be him. "I don't think so, Ball Buster. You're not giving your panties to an old man." "Oh, and you're so young, Garlic?" "Garlic?" What the hell was that? "Yep. Now we have pet names for each other, isn't that adorable? You're Garlic and I'm Ball Buster. Now everyone will believe we're a real couple.

Dear brother," Number Two replied, "I can eat shit, I just don't like the taste.

Miss Temple, perhaps you will demonstrate the proper curtsy for us?" Without ado, Cecily temple, She Who Can Do No Wrong, settles to the floor in a long, slow, graceful arc that seems to defy gravity. It is a thing of beauty. I am hideously jealous. "Thank you, Miss Temple." Yes. Thank you, you little demon beast. May you marry a man who eats garlic with every meal.

While cooking demands your entire attention, it also rewards you with endlessly sensual pleasures... The seductive softness of chocolate beginning to melt from solid to liquid. The tug of sauce against the spoon when it thickens in teh pan, and the lovely lightness of Parmesan drifting from the grater in gossamer flakes. Time slows down in teh kitchen, offering up an entire universe of small satisfactions.

Viv: I don't really know how to break this to you. But I think you are maybe falling in love with me. Jonah: Viv, I just made you wild-caught Alaskan salmon baked with mango chutney, on a bed of garlic red potatoes ans arugula. While talking about an Audrey Hepburn movie. I think you are maybe falling in love with me.

She’d bought a blue notebook in the pharmacy to write down her aunt’s remedies. Star tulip to understand dreams, bee balm for a restful sleep, black mustard seed to repel nightmares, remedies that used essential oils of almond or apricot or myrrh from thorn trees in the desert. Two eggs, which must never be eaten, set under a bed to clean a tainted atmosphere. Vinegar as a cleansing bath. Garlic, salt, and rosemary, the ancient spell to cast away evil.

My mother was the first person you called for a recipe (a cup of onions, garlic, don’t forget the pinch of sugar) and the last one you called at night when you just couldn’t sleep (a cup of hot water with lemon, lavender oil, magnesium pills). She knew the exact ratio of olive oil to garlic in any recipe, and she could whip up dinner from three pantry items, easy. She had all the answers. I, on the other hand, have none of them, and now I no longer have her.

The difference between me and Abdolkader was that I spoke to my wife with refinement and he spoke to her coarsely and violently, I took a shower once a day and he took one once a month, I didn't even eat spring onions and he ate onions and garlic and radishes by the kilo, I read her poetry by Sa'di and he belched at her... And so in my wife's eyes I was stupid and he was clever, I was an idiot and he was refined

basic Khamitic diet consisted of beans, lentils, peas, barley, millet, nuts, fruits (such as dates, melons, and pomegranates), vegetables (such as onions, cabbage, and peppers), and healing herbs such as gotu kola, nettle, aloe, garlic, and parsley. And when they were invaded by Asian nomadic shepherds, the Heq Shaasu (Hyksos), more flesh foods entered the diet, thus sowing the seeds of our ultimate deterioration.

Honey, have you seen my measuring tape?” “I think it’s in that drawer in the kitchen with the scissors, matches, bobby pins, Scotch tape, nail clippers, barbecue tongs, garlic press, extra buttons, old birthday cards, soy sauce packets thick rubber bands, stack of Christmas napkins, stained take-out menus, old cell-phone chargers, instruction booklet for the VCR, some assorted nickels, an incomplete deck of cards, extra chain links for a watch, a half-finished pack of cough drops, a Scrabble piece I found while vacuuming, dead batteries we aren’t fully sure are dead yet, a couple screws in a tiny plastic bag left over from the bookshelf, that lock with the forgotten combination, a square of carefully folded aluminum foil, and expired pack of gum, a key to our old house, a toaster warranty card, phone numbers for unknown people, used birthday candles, novelty bottle openers, a barbecue lighter, and that one tiny little spoon.” “Thanks, honey.” AWESOME!

[In an interview when asked about becoming a fantasy creature] You know, it might be fun to be Sanguinarius Meyerii (better known as “sparklers”). They have all of the vampire superpowers and almost none of the weaknesses: no burning up in sunlight, no vulnerability to garlic, etc. As for my demise, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Once I get this kind of power, I’m planning to live forever. It’s the only way I’ll catch up on my reading!

The banquet proceeded. The first course, a mince of olives, shrimp and onions baked in oyster shells with cheese and parsley was followed by a soup of tunny, cockles and winkles simmered in white wine with leeks and dill. Then, in order, came a service of broiled quail stuffed with morels, served on slices of good white bread, with side dishes of green peas; artichokes cooked in wine and butter, with a salad of garden greens; then tripes and sausages with pickled cabbage; then a noble saddle of venison glazed with cherry sauce and served with barley first simmered in broth, then fried with garlic and sage; then honey-cakes, nuts and oranges; and all the while the goblets flowed full with noble Voluspa and San Sue from Watershade, along with the tart green muscat wine of Dascinet.

AN EMPTY GARLIC "You miss the garden, because you want a small fig from a random tree. You don't meet the beautiful woman. You're joking with an old crone. It makes me want to cry how she detains you, stinking mouthed, with a hundred talons, putting her head over the roof edge to call down, tasteless fig, fold over fold, empty as dry-rotten garlic. She has you tight by the belt, even though there's no flower and no milk inside her body. Death will open your eyes to what her face is: leather spine of a black lizard. No more advice. Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.

The sun, a red wheel, was sinking slowly in the west. Besides being spectacularly beautiful, the early-summer sunset was exceedingly soft and gentle: black mulberry leaves turned as red as roses; pristine white acacia petals shed an enshrouding pale-green aura. Mild evening breezes made both the mulberry leaves and the acacia petals dance and whirl, filling the woods with a soft rustle.

What are you making?" he asked me. "Eggplant with a pomegranate walnut sauce." It was nice to be able to answer at least something with certainty. I turned the eggplant over in the pan. The sauce was just a mixture of pomegranate juice, good red wine vinegar, garlic, red pepper flakes, and salt. Nothing else. It was hard for me to resist embellishing recipes that called for so little, but the complexity of the juice transformed what would otherwise be the world's most basic support ingredients into a symphony of flavor.

My yogurt was nestled into a bag, waiting to turn into aushak, and all around us were sausages and pastry, lollipops and spices, chicken and cheese. Any world that contained all this, I thought surveying our loot, was a very fine place. I felt reinvigorated, alive, optimistic. The though of getting back to work suddenly seemed like fun.

The difference between me and Abolqader was that I spoke to my wife with refinement and he spoke to her coarsely and violently, I took a shower once a day and he took one once a month, I didn't even eat spring onions and he ate onions and garlic and radishes by the kilo, I read her poetry by Sa'di and he belched at her...and so in my wife's eyes I was stupid and he was clever, I was an idiot and he was intelligent. I was coarse and he was refined...But apparently he was a very good traveller.." Asadollah Mirza (from My Uncle Napoleon).

In the common room, they found Emer dozing in her chair, Lila scratching at the door, and Mine stirring a large pot and peering at its contents with an anxious, irritated expression. With a groan, the Archmage strode across the room and flung open the windows. "It just needs more basil," Mine assured him. "No, it does not," Bram declared. "It needs less garlic. Didn't I tell you to follow a recipe?" "I did follow a recipe!" Shouted Mine, defiantly flinging the rest of the basil into the pot. "Show it to me, then." "I threw it in the fire!" "What have I told you about lying, child?" "To get better at it!

every session I had no fewer than sixteen girls with “allergies” to dairy and wheat—cheese and bread basically—but also to garlic, eggplant, corn, and nuts. They had cleverly developed “allergies,” I believe, to the foods they had seen their own mothers fearing and loathing as diet fads passed through their homes. I could’ve strangled their mothers for saddling these girls with the idea that food is an enemy—some of them only eight years old and already weird about wanting a piece of bread—and I would’ve liked to bludgeon them, too, for forcing me to participate in their young daughters’ fucked-up relationship with food.

As for describing the smell of a spaniel mixed with the smell of torches, laurels, incense, banners, wax candles and a garland of rose leaves crushed by a satin heel that has been laid up in camphor, perhaps Shakespeare, had he paused in the middle of writing Antony and Cleopatra — But Shakespeare did not pause. Confessing our inadequacy, then, we can but note that to Flush Italy, in these the fullest, the freest, the happiest years of his life, meant mainly a succession of smells. Love, it must be supposed, was gradually losing its appeal. Smell remained. Now that they were established in Casa Guidi again, all had their avocations. Mr. Browning wrote regularly in one room; Mrs. Browning wrote regularly in another. The baby played in the nursery. But Flush wandered off into the streets of Florence to enjoy the rapture of smell. He threaded his path through main streets and back streets, through squares and alleys, by smell. He nosed his way from smell to smell; the rough, the smooth, the dark, the golden. He went in and out, up and down, where they beat brass, where they bake bread, where the women sit combing their hair, where the bird-cages are piled high on the causeway, where the wine spills itself in dark red stains on the pavement, where leather smells and harness and garlic, where cloth is beaten, where vine leaves tremble, where men sit and drink and spit and dice — he ran in and out, always with his nose to the ground, drinking in the essence; or with his nose in the air vibrating with the aroma. He slept in this hot patch of sun — how sun made the stone reek! he sought that tunnel of shade — how acid shade made the stone smell! He devoured whole bunches of ripe grapes largely because of their purple smell; he chewed and spat out whatever tough relic of goat or macaroni the Italian housewife had thrown from the balcony — goat and macaroni were raucous smells, crimson smells. He followed the swooning sweetness of incense into the violet intricacies of dark cathedrals; and, sniffing, tried to lap the gold on the window- stained tomb. Nor was his sense of touch much less acute. He knew Florence in its marmoreal smoothness and in its gritty and cobbled roughness. Hoary folds of drapery, smooth fingers and feet of stone received the lick of his tongue, the quiver of his shivering snout. Upon the infinitely sensitive pads of his feet he took the clear stamp of proud Latin inscriptions. In short, he knew Florence as no human being has ever known it; as Ruskin never knew it or George Eliot either.

There was no wind, and, outside now of the warm air of the cave, heavy with smoke of both tobacco and charcoal, with the odor of cooked rice and meat, saffron, pimentos, and oil, the tarry, wine-spilled smell of the big skin hung beside the door, hung by the neck and all the four legs extended, wine drawn from a plug fitted in one leg, wine that spilled a little onto the earth of the floor, settling the dust smell; out now from the odors of different herbs whose names he did not know that hung in bunches from the ceiling, with long ropes of garlic, away now from the copper-penny, red wine and garlic, horse sweat and man sweat died in the clothing (acrid and gray the man sweat, sweet and sickly the dried brushed-off lather of horse sweat, of the men at the table, Robert Jordan breathed deeply of the clear night air of the mountains that smelled of the pines and of the dew on the grass in the meadow by the stream.

I was ready when Quentin approached me after school the following day. “Genie,” he said. “Please. Let me expl—moomph!” “Stay away,” I said, mashing the bulb of garlic into his face as hard as I could. I didn’t have any crosses or holy water at home. I had to work with what was available. Quentin slowly picked the cloves out of my hand before popping them into his mouth. “That’s white vampires,” he said, chewing and swallowing the raw garlic like a bite of fruit. “If I was a jiangshi you should have brought a mirror.” I wrinkled my nose. “You’re going to stink now.” “What, like a Chinese?” He pursed his lips and blew a kiss at me. Instead of being pungent, his breath was sweet with plum blossoms and coconut. Like his body magically refused to be anything but intensely appealing to me, even on a molecular level. I tried to swat away his scent before it made me drunk.

Like, okay. Do you know any straight, male-assigned men who kind of get it? Like, they try to be feminist, but they acknowledge that it is a complicated, maybe impossible thing for a man to be a feminist, so they're respectful of women, and give space, stand back, whatever. And it would be totally great except that it leads to them never doing anything? Like they just stand back, and, say there are some books that need to be shelved, the windows are all dirty, there are boxes that need to go outside, and some kid threw up somewhere. You will start, say, carrying the boxes outside, and then when that's done, you start mopping up the puke, and he is just standing there, so you're like, What the fuck! Are you going to move these books or clean a window? And they're like, Oh, okay, totally, in this very enlightened way that gives you space to fucking do everything, except they need you to show them how to clean a window, because they don't want to do it wrong? That kind of guy. I will admit: it's more complicated than that, right, I shouldn't be mean. Straight dudes have it kind of rough if they don't want to shake out their male privilege all over the place. But really? You don't know how to make a bed? You don't know how to fucking cook the onions and garlic before you throw in all the other vegetables?

Lake Michigan, impossibly blue, the morning light bouncing toward the city. Lake Michigan frozen in sheets you could walk on but wouldn't dare. Lake Michigan, gray out a high-rise window, indistinguishable from the sky. Bread, hot from the oven. Or even stale in the restaurant basket, rescued by salty butter. The Cubs winning the pendant someday. The Cubs winning the Series. The Cubs continuing to lose. His favorite song, not yet written. His favorite movie, not yet made. The depth of an oil brushstroke. Chagall's blue window. Picasso's blue man and his guitar. ... The sound of an old door creaking open. The sound of garlic cooking. The sound of typing. The sound of commercials from the next room, when you were in the kitchen getting a drink. The sound of someone else finishing a shower. ... Dancing till the floor was an optional landing place. Dancing elbows out, dancing with arms up, dancing in a pool of sweat. All the books he hadn't started. The man at Wax Trax! Records with the beautiful eyelashes. The man who sat every Saturday at Nookies, reading the Economist and eating eggs, his ears always strangely red. The ways his own life might have intersected with theirs, given enough time, enough energy, a better universe. The love of his life. Wasn't there supposed to be a love of his life? ... His body, his own stupid, slow, hairy body, its ridiculous desires, its aversions, its fears. The way his left knee cracked in the cold. The sun, the moon, the sky, the stars. The end of every story. Oak trees. Music. Breath. ...

It's like any time a white friend suggests Korean barbecue. Or when I see a Food Network special where some tattooed white dude with a nineteenth-century-looking beard-and-mustache combo introduces viewers to this kimchi al pastor bánh mì monstrosity he peddles from a food truck that sends out location tweets. It's like when white people tell me how much they love kimchee and bull-go-ghee, and the words just roll off their tongues as if there exists nothing irreconcilable between the two languages. It's like, don't touch my shit. It's difficult to articulate because I know it's not rational. But as a bilingual immigrant from Korea, as someone who code-switches between Korean and English daily while running errands or going to the supermarket, not to mention the second-nature combination of the languages that I'll speak with my parents and siblings, switching on and switching off these at times unfeasibly different sounds, dialects, grammatical structures? It's fucking irritating. I don't want to be stingy about who gets to enjoy all these fermented wonders -- I'm glad the stigma around our stinky wares is dissolving away. But when my husband brings me a plate of food he made out of guesswork with a list of ingredients I've curated over the years of my burgeoning adulthood with the implicit help of my mother, my grandmother, and my grandmother's mother who taught me the patience of peeling dozens of garlic cloves in a sitting with bare hands, it puts me in snap-me-pff-a-hickory-switch mode.

I never leave home without my cayenne pepper. I either stash a bottle of the liquid extract in my pocket book or I stick it in the shopping cart I pull around with me all over Manhattan. When it comes to staying right side up in this world, a black woman needs at least three things. The first is a quiet spot of her own, a place away from the nonsense. The second is a stash of money, like the cash my mother kept hidden in the slit of her mattress. The last is several drops of cayenne pepper, always at the ready. Sprinkle that on your food before you eat it and it’ll kill any lurking bacteria. The powder does the trick as well, but I prefer the liquid because it hits the bloodstream quickly. Particularly when eating out, I won’t touch a morsel to my lips ‘til it’s speckled with with cayenne. That’s just one way I take care of my temple, aside from preparing my daily greens, certain other habits have carried me toward the century mark. First thing I do every morning is drink four glasses of water. People think this water business is a joke. But I’m here to tell you that it’s not. I’ve known two elderly people who died of dehydration, one of whom fell from his bed in the middle of the night and couldn’t stand up because he was so parched. Following my water, I drink 8 ounces of fresh celery blended in my Vita-mix. The juice cleanses the system and reduces inflammation. My biggest meal is my first one: oatmeal. I soak my oats overnight so that when I get up all I have to do is turn on the burner. Sometimes I enjoy them with warm almond milk, other times I add grated almonds and berries, put the mixture in my tumbler and shake it until it’s so smooth I can drink it. In any form, oats do the heart good. Throughout the day I eat sweet potatoes, which are filled with fiber, beets sprinkled with a little olive oil, and vegetables of every variety. I also still enjoy plenty of salad, though I stopped adding so many carrots – too much sugar. But I will do celery, cucumbers, seaweed grass and other greens. God’s fresh bounty doesn’t need a lot of dressing up, which is why I generally eat my salad plain. From time to time I do drizzle it with garlic oil. I love the taste. I also love lychee nuts. I put them in the freezer so that when I bite into them cold juice comes flooding out. As terrific as they are, I buy them only once in awhile. I recently bit into an especially sweet one, and then I stuck it right back in the freezer. “Not today, Suzie,” I said to myself, “full of glucose!” I try never to eat late, and certainly not after nine p.m. Our organs need a chance to rest. And before bed, of course, I have a final glass of water. I don’t mess around with my hydration.

I don’t like stories. I like moments. I like night better than day, moon better than sun, and here-and-now better than any sometime-later. I also like birds, mushrooms, the blues, peacock feathers, black cats, blue-eyed people, heraldry, astrology, criminal stories with lots of blood, and ancient epic poems where human heads can hold conversations with former friends and generally have a great time for years after they’ve been cut off. I like good food and good drink, sitting in a hot bath and lounging in a snowbank, wearing everything I own at once, and having everything I need close at hand. I like speed and that special ache in the pit of the stomach when you accelerate to the point of no return. I like to frighten and to be frightened, to amuse and to confound. I like writing on the walls so that no one can guess who did it, and drawing so that no one can guess what it is. I like doing my writing using a ladder or not using it, with a spray can or squeezing the paint from a tube. I like painting with a brush, with a sponge, and with my fingers. I like drawing the outline first and then filling it in completely, so that there’s no empty space left. I like letters as big as myself, but I like very small ones as well. I like directing those who read them here and there by means of arrows, to other places where I also wrote something, but I also like to leave false trails and false signs. I like to tell fortunes with runes, bones, beans, lentils, and I Ching. Hot climates I like in the books and movies; in real life, rain and wind. Generally rain is what I like most of all. Spring rain, summer rain, autumn rain. Any rain, anytime. I like rereading things I’ve read a hundred times over. I like the sound of the harmonica, provided I’m the one playing it. I like lots of pockets, and clothes so worn that they become a kind of second skin instead of something that can be taken off. I like guardian amulets, but specific ones, so that each is responsible for something separate, not the all-inclusive kind. I like drying nettles and garlic and then adding them to anything and everything. I like covering my fingers with rubber cement and then peeling it off in front of everybody. I like sunglasses. Masks, umbrellas, old carved furniture, copper basins, checkered tablecloths, walnut shells, walnuts themselves, wicker chairs, yellowed postcards, gramophones, beads, the faces on triceratopses, yellow dandelions that are orange in the middle, melting snowmen whose carrot noses have fallen off, secret passages, fire-evacuation-route placards; I like fretting when in line at the doctor’s office, and screaming all of a sudden so that everyone around feels bad, and putting my arm or leg on someone when asleep, and scratching mosquito bites, and predicting the weather, keeping small objects behind my ears, receiving letters, playing solitaire, smoking someone else’s cigarettes, and rummaging in old papers and photographs. I like finding something lost so long ago that I’ve forgotten why I needed it in the first place. I like being really loved and being everyone’s last hope, I like my own hands—they are beautiful, I like driving somewhere in the dark using a flashlight, and turning something into something completely different, gluing and attaching things to each other and then being amazed that it actually worked. I like preparing things both edible and not, mixing drinks, tastes, and scents, curing friends of the hiccups by scaring them. There’s an awful lot of stuff I like.