Ripe Apple Quotes

The revolution is not an apple that falls when ripe. You have to make it fall.

Why does an apple fall when it is ripe? Is it brought down by the force of gravity? Is it because its stalk withers? Because it is dried by the sun, because it grows too heavy, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it? None of these is the cause.... Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill is in the historical sense not free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and preordained from all eternity.

She laughed at the stars, frightened but free, her terror as sharp as pain and as sweet as a ripe October apple

Once inside my skull, my doctor added some salt, just to taste.  He also poured some fruit into my skull – an apple, a pear, a few seedless grapes, and a ripe banana.  He then used an electric blender set on its highest speed to create what he had termed ‘a yogurt parfait.’  After he finished blending the ingredients, he beckoned the other doctors and a few of the nurses to sample his new concoction.

A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Good girls smell like burnt tangerines for those with bad intentions-- fragrant but bitter, it is a repellant. Bad girls like me smell like ripe apples, ready for picking, juicy and tart. No one will miss them at all.

The High Lord did not smile. I kept my face neutral, vaguely bored. His gaze drifted to my chest, the bare skin revealed by the sweeping vee of my gown, as if he could see where that spark of life, his power, had gone. Rhys followed that gaze. “Her breasts are rather spectacular, aren’t they? Delicious as ripe apples.” I fought the urge to scowl, and instead slid my attention to him, as indolently as he’d looked at me, at the others. “Here I was, thinking you had a fascination with my mouth.

Peppermint swirled into my nostrils, sharp as glass, then raspberry almost to sweet, like too-ripe fruit. Apple, crisp and pure. Nuts, buttery, warm, earthy

What wondrous life in this I lead Ripe apples drop about my head

Everybody has asked the question. . ."What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!

There were so many miracles at work: that a blossom might become a peach, that a bee could make honey in its thorax, that rain might someday fall. I thought then about the seasons changing, and in the gray of night I could almost will myself to see the azure sky, the gold of the maple leaves, the crimson of the ripe apples, the hoarfrost on the grass.

Just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old. This ripeness is so delightful to me that, as I approach nearer to death, I seem, as it were, to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.

The ripe, the golden month has come again, and in Virginia the chinkapins are falling. Frost sharps the middle music of the seasons, and all things living on the earth turn home again... the fields are cut, the granaries are full, the bins are loaded to the brim with fatness, and from the cider-press the rich brown oozings of the York Imperials run. The bee bores to the belly of the grape, the fly gets old and fat and blue, he buzzes loud, crawls slow, creeps heavily to death on sill and ceiling, the sun goes down in blood and pollen across the bronzed and mown fields of the old October.

The air was fresh and crisp and had a distinct smell which was a mixture of the dried leaves on the ground and the smoke from the chimneys and the sweet ripe apples that were still clinging onto the branches in the orchard behind the house.

These apples were always counted, and about the time when they began to grow ripe it was found that every night one of them was gone. The king

He kissed her and whispered nothings that were as sweet as ripe apples, but that meant far less to him.

When she says margarita she means daiquiri. When she says quixotic she means mercurial. And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again," she means, "Put your arms around me from behind as I stand disconsolate at the window." He's supposed to know that. When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading, or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he is raking leaves in Ithaca or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate at the window overlooking the bay where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels drinking lemonade and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed where she remains asleep and very warm. When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks. When she says, "We're talking about me now," he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says, "Did somebody die?" When a woman loves a man, they have gone to swim naked in the stream on a glorious July day with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle of water rushing over smooth rocks, and there is nothing alien in the universe. Ripe apples fall about them. What else can they do but eat? When he says, "Ours is a transitional era," "that's very original of you," she replies, dry as the martini he is sipping. They fight all the time It's fun What do I owe you? Let's start with an apology Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead. A sign is held up saying "Laughter." It's a silent picture. "I've been fucked without a kiss," she says, "and you can quote me on that," which sounds great in an English accent. One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it another nine times. When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the airport in a foreign country with a jeep. When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that she's two hours late and there's nothing in the refrigerator. When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake. She's like a child crying at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end. When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking: as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved. A thousand fireflies wink at him. The frogs sound like the string section of the orchestra warming up. The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.

A certain king had a beautiful garden, and in the garden stood a tree which bore golden apples. These apples were always counted, and about the time when they began to grow ripe it was found that every night one of them was gone. The king became very angry at this, and ordered the gardener to keep watch all night under the tree. The gardener set his eldest son to watch; but about twelve o'clock he fell asleep, and in the morning another of the apples was missing. Then the second son was ordered to watch; and at midnight he too fell asleep, and in the morning another apple was gone. Then the third son offered to keep watch; but the gardener at first would not let him, for fear some harm should come to him: however, at last he consented, and the young man laid himself under the tree to watch. As the clock struck twelve he heard a rustling noise in the air, and a bird came flying that was of pure gold; and as it was snapping at one of the apples with its beak, the gardener's son jumped up and shot an arrow at it. But the arrow did the bird no harm; only it dropped a golden feather from its tail, and then flew away. The golden feather was brought to the king in the morning, and all the council was called together. Everyone agreed that it was worth more than all the wealth of the kingdom: but the king said, 'One feather is of no use to me, I must have the whole bird.

No person is just one person. Everyone is a crate of fruits, a crate of mixed fruits. The apple in there may have worms, a peach may be mildewed, a banana may be too green, a pear may be in perfect ripeness, and a melon may have the sweetest smell.

You plucked my virginity from me as easily as a ripe apple from a tree?” His jaw dropped in mock outrage. “Easy! I had to work hard for that apple! For months I had to pet the tree, kiss the tree, sweet talk the tree--” … “It was the most delicious apple I’ve ever had in my entire life. I’ve never had one better.

Sometimes a banana with coffee is nice. It ought not to be too ripe - in fact there should be a definite remainder of green along the stalk, and if there isn't, forget about it. Though admittedly that is easier said than done. Apples an be forgotten about, but not bananas, not really. They don't in fact take at all well to being forgotten about. They wizen and stink of putrid and go almost black.

Yet here, this night, you might repose with me, On green leaves pillowed: apples ripe have I, Soft chestnuts, and of curdled milk enow. And, see, the farm-roof chimneys smoke afar, And from the hills the shadows lengthening fall!

Neither's the one you get, less you want me to see if your apple's ripe, yet. - Yoren

People are apples. Good apples. Bad apples. Too ripe or too raw. Hard or soft. Sweet or sour. And in every apple, there’s a core. A heart. Something that makes them uniquely themselves.

Fall arrived with its honey light and cool evenings, and the maple leaves brightened to match the reds and yellow of ripe apples. It was time to put away the bounty of the warm months for fortitude during the cold ones, as humans had done for centuries.

He drove the car back through the night to Paris. The hedges and orchards of Normandy flew past him. The moon hung oval and large in the misty sky. The ship was forgotten. Only the landscape remained. The landscape, the smell of hay and ripe apples, the silence and the deep peace of the inevitable

It was sufficiently late in the year for the orchards to be ruddy with ripe apples; and in a few places the hop-pickers were already at work. I thought it all extremely beautiful, and made up my mind to sleep among the hops that night: imagining some cheerful companionship in the long perspectives of poles, with the graceful leaves twining

The world is ripe, and we'll pluck it like an apple from a tree.

I like watching you scared; you just look like a ripe apple

The air smelled of ripe apples and dying leaves and wood smoke. The wind made you ache in some place deeper than your bones.

It rained in Hampshire yesterday, a soft autumn storm that brought down hardly any leaves. The dahlias are no longer in stem, and frost has withered the chrysanthemums, but the air smells divine, like old leaves and wet bark, and ripe apples. Have you ever noticed that each month has its own smell? May and October are the nicest-smelling months, in my opinion.

Dancy can hear rain beginning to fall on the tar-paper roof of the cabin. Fat summer raindrops, and it’s the sweetest sound, almost, sweet as the end of a fever, as ripe as red apples.

Late August" Late August — This is the plum season, the nights blue and distended, the moon hazed, this is the season of peaches with their lush lobed bulbs that glow in the dusk, apples that drop and rot sweetly, their brown skins veined as glands No more the shrill voices that cried Need Need from the cold pond, bladed and urgent as new grass Now it is the crickets that say Ripe Ripe slurred in the darkness, while the plums dripping on the lawn outside our window, burst with a sound like thick syrup muffled and slow The air is still warm, flesh moves over flesh, there is no hurry

A certain king had a beautiful garden, and in the garden stood a tree which bore golden apples. These apples were always counted, and about the time when they began to grow ripe it was found that every night one of them was gone. The king became very angry at this, and ordered the gardener to keep watch all night under the tree.

A soaking rain had just stopped, and his boots sank deeply into the nitrogen-rich soil. The entire orchard smelled of wet wood and ripe fruit. It was a strong dizzying scent, and nothing else was quite like it- though his grandfather used to say this smell was identical to the limestone caves of Lower Normandy: cold and dripping, where cask upon cask of Calvados, the great fortified apple brandy of Norman lords, slept away the years.

Rhys followed that gaze. 'Her breasts are rather spectacular, aren't they? Delicious as ripe apples.' I fought the urge to scowl, and instead slid my attention to him, as indolently as he'd looked at me, at the others. 'Here I was, thinking you had a fascination with my mouth.' Delighted surprise lit Rhys' eyes, there and gone in a heartbeat.

The wind was as ripe as apples, so full of fall that you could almost bite every breath.

Australia smelt of apples. Ripe, green, crisp apples. A smell so sharp and sweet it made my teeth tingle.

To Autumn" Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

The creative act is not an act of creation in the sense of the Old Testament. It does not create something out of noting; it uncovers, selects, re-shuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, skills. The more familiar the parts, the more striking the new whole. Man's knowledge of the changes of the tides and the phases of the moon is as old as his observation that apples fall to earth in the ripeness of time. Yet the combination of these and other equally familiar data in Newton's theory of gravity changed mankind's outlook on the world.

He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge.

Most of what is wrong in horizontal church flows from attempts to get green apples interested in Jesus. Green apples are very articulate about that they do and don't want in church. They don't want to hear about money, because that is one of their idols; they don't want to be told about sin, because that assaults pride; no interest in pressure to decide for Jesus, because that threatens their autonomy. Sadly when church becomes what green apples must have or they won't come. It ceases to be what it must be for God to attend. Church needs to be offensive to green apples or it can be helpful to those who are ripe.

In the restaurant kitchen, August meant lobsters, blackberries, silver queen corn, and tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. In honor of the last year of the restaurant, Fiona was creating a different tomato special for each day of the month. The first of August (two hundred and fifty covers on the book, eleven reservation wait list) was a roasted yellow tomato soup. The second of August (two hundred and fifty covers, seven reservation wait list) was tomato pie with a Gruyère crust. On the third of August, Ernie Otemeyer came in with his wife to celebrate his birthday and since Ernie liked food that went with his Bud Light, Fiona made a Sicilian pizza- a thick, doughy crust, a layer of fresh buffalo mozzarella, topped with a voluptuous tomato-basil sauce. One morning when she was working the phone, Adrienne stepped into the kitchen hoping to get a few minutes with Mario, and she found Fiona taking a bite out of red ripe tomato like it was an apple. Fiona held the tomato out. "I'd put this on the menu," she said. "But few would understand.

When a woman loves a man, they have gone to swim naked in the stream on a glorious July day with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle of water rushing over smooth rocks, and there is nothing alien in the universe. Ripe apples fall about them. What else can they do but eat? ... One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it      another nine times. When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the      airport in a foreign country with a jeep. When a man loves a woman he's there. He doesn't complain that      she's two hours late and there's nothing in the refrigerator. When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake. She's like a child crying at nightfall because she didn't want the day to end. When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking: as midnight to the moon is sleep to the beloved. A thousand fireflies wink at him. The frogs sound like the string section of the orchestra warming up. The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.

He leaned forward and bit her bottom lip. It was just the right size. He hated women with thin, judgmental lips. Smeared with dark red lipstick. Stingy and manipulative. Bev’s mouth looked ripe and vulnerable. He sucked on that soft lower lip for a few seconds.

Well the end is coming, isn't it? We spend our entire lives running from it. No speaking of it allowed. Fearing it for our loved ones." She shook her head and folded the burp cloth in her hand. "But after all we've seen of the world, I decided I'll get more joy out of the days I have left if I just acknowledge that death is part of life. The leaves on an apple tree blossom yield and fall. No use fretting over the sweetness of the fruit. Got to pick it when it looks ripe and move on. It's the fool who's forlorn over what he imagines he's lost. I'm sure that's in the Gospel somewhere." Even if it wasn't, Rachel would amend the text to her liking. The Word according to Rachel, as some complained. Not Marilla of course. Rachel was her closest friend, so she kept quiet, in Cuthbert fashion.

I closed my eyes, flared my nostrils, and let the scents flood in. The strongest of them, caramel and brown sugar, smell as yellow-orange as the sun, came first. That one was easy. The one that anyone would notice coming into the shop. And then chocolate of course, the bitter dark and the sugary milk chocolate. I don’t think a normal girl would’ve smelled anything else, and part of me wanted to stop there. But I could feel Sam’s heart pounding behind me, and for once, I gave in. Peppermint swirled into my nostrils, sharp as glass, then raspberry, almost too sweet, like too-ripe fruit. Apple, crisp and pure. Nuts, buttery, warm, earthy, like Sam. The subtle, mild scent of white chocolate. Oh, God, some sort of mocha, rich and dark and sinful. I sighed with pleasure, but there was more. The butter cookies on the shelves added a floury, comforting scent, and the lollipops, a riot of fruit scents too concentrated to be real. The salty bite of pretzels, the bright smell of lemon, the brittle edge of anise. Smells I didn’t even know names for. I groaned.

Lo, ’tis autumn; Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind; Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the trellis’d vines;* (Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines? Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing?)*

Quinces are ripe...when they are the yellow of canary wings in midflight. they are ripe when their scent teases you with the snap of green apples and the perfumed embrace of coral roses. but even then quinces remain a fruit, hard and obstinate--useless...until they are simmered, coddled for hours above a low, steady flame. add honey and water and watch their dry, bone-colored flesh soak-up the heat, coating itself in an opulent orange, not of the sunrises that you never see but of the insides of tree-ripened papayas, a color you can taste. to answer your question__love is not a bowl of quinces yellowing in a blue and white china bowl, seen but untouched__. ~The Book of Salt

A picnic basket in Paris is like a treasure chest- untold riches in a limited space. The first apricots had appeared at the market, their skins fading from speckled red to glowing orange to burnished gold, like the sun-bleached walls of an Italian villa. There were tiny cucumbers, as thick as my thumb and curled like a ribbon. I'd become obsessed with a new fruit called a pêche plat, a flat peach. Imagine a perfectly ripe white peach that someone has sat on. Gwendal picked up a tomato and bit into it like an apple. I did the same. At the bottom of the basket was a carefully folded square of waxed paper. Inside was a small mound of rillettes, shredded pork cooked in its own fat until meltingly smooth.

The woman, who belonged to the courtesan class, was celebrated for an embonpoint unusual for her age, which had earned for her the sobriquet of "Boule de Suif" (Tallow Ball). Short and round, fat as a pig, with puffy fingers constricted at the joints, looking like rows of short sausages; with a shiny, tightly-stretched skin and an enormous bust filling out the bodice of her dress, she was yet attractive and much sought after, owing to her fresh and pleasing appearance. Her face was like a crimson apple, a peony-bud just bursting into bloom; she had two magnificent dark eyes, fringed with thick, heavy lashes, which cast a shadow into their depths; her mouth was small, ripe, kissable, and was furnished with the tiniest of white teeth.

There was no doubt that the tree before us was the tree; it could have stepped from the tales into the forest. It was centered in an oddly round clearing, as if the other trees had all felt inclined to back away, and was towering but skeletal, its trunk only a little wider than I was and its many, many branches arching and tangling overhead, like a small person propping up a tremendous, many-layered umbrella. But the strangest thing about the tree was its foliage. There were leaves of summer-green mixed in with the fire and gold of autumn; tidy buds just opening their pink mouths, and, here and there, red fruits dangling in clusters, heavy with ripeness. These fruits could not be easily identified; they were roughly the size of apples, but furred like peaches.

Joel was only twenty-six but there was about him the sense of something over-ripe and gone to seed. He was not tall, and not exactly fat. But once noticed, immediately, those large red lips, which hovered on that balancing point where sensuality becomes greed. His fleshy face was a trifle too smooth and the skin glistened like a suspect apple which had been waxed to give it extra sales appeal.

CHRISTMAS FUSS IN BARBADOS IN THE 70’S Ginger immersed in the brewed sorrel was always tempting. There was also the aroma of the red English apples on the table, and ripe golden apples smelling heavenly. The smell of the new cloth, from the curtains reminded us that it was Christmas. There was also the smell of the oil skin tablecloth on our varnished table, the smell of new sheets on our bed, and not forgetting the smell of the big shaddock which sat in the center of the table.

The Sparrow Sisters' roses still bloomed on New Year's Day, their scent rich and warm even when snow weighted their petals closed. When customers came down the rutted road to the small eighteenth-century barn where the sisters worked, they marveled at the jasmine that twined through the split-rail fence, the perfume so intense they could feel it in their mouths. As they paid for their purchases, they wondered (vaguely, it must be said, for the people of Granite Point knew not to think too hard about the Sisters) how it was that clematis and honeysuckle climbed the barn in November and the morning glories bloomed all day. The fruit trees were so fecund that the peaches hung on the low branches, surrounded by more blossoms, apples and pears ripened in June and stayed sweet and fresh into December. Their Italian fig trees were heavy with purple teardrop fruit only weeks after they were planted. If you wanted a tomato so ripe the juice seemed to move beneath the skin, you needed only to pick up a punnet at the Nursery.

He was forever wallowing in the mire, dirtying his nose, scrabbling his face, treading down the backs of his shoes, gaping at flies and chasing the butterflies (over whom his father held sway); he would pee in his shoes, shit over his shirt-tails, [wipe his nose on his sleeves,] dribble snot into his soup and go galumphing about. [He would drink out of his slippers, regularly scratch his belly on wicker-work baskets, cut his teeth on his clogs, get his broth all over his hands, drag his cup through his hair, hide under a wet sack, drink with his mouth full, eat girdle-cake but not bread, bite for a laugh and laugh while he bit, spew in his bowl, let off fat farts, piddle against the sun, leap into the river to avoid the rain, strike while the iron was cold, dream day-dreams, act the goody-goody, skin the renard, clack his teeth like a monkey saying its prayers, get back to his muttons, turn the sows into the meadow, beat the dog to teach the lion, put the cart before the horse, scratch himself where he ne’er did itch, worm secrets out from under your nose, let things slip, gobble the best bits first, shoe grasshoppers, tickle himself to make himself laugh, be a glutton in the kitchen, offer sheaves of straw to the gods, sing Magnificat at Mattins and think it right, eat cabbage and squitter puree, recognize flies in milk, pluck legs off flies, scrape paper clean but scruff up parchment, take to this heels, swig straight from the leathern bottle, reckon up his bill without Mine Host, beat about the bush but snare no birds, believe clouds to be saucepans and pigs’ bladders lanterns, get two grists from the same sack, act the goat to get fed some mash, mistake his fist for a mallet, catch cranes at the first go, link by link his armour make, always look a gift horse in the mouth, tell cock-and-bull stories, store a ripe apple between two green ones, shovel the spoil back into the ditch, save the moon from baying wolves, hope to pick up larks if the heavens fell in, make virtue out of necessity, cut his sops according to his loaf, make no difference twixt shaven and shorn, and skin the renard every day.]

The Garden" How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their uncessant labours see Crown’d from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all flow’rs and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose. Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men; Your sacred plants, if here below, Only among the plants will grow. Society is all but rude, To this delicious solitude. No white nor red was ever seen So am’rous as this lovely green. Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress’ name; Little, alas, they know or heed How far these beauties hers exceed! Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound, No name shall but your own be found. When we have run our passion’s heat, Love hither makes his best retreat. The gods, that mortal beauty chase, Still in a tree did end their race: Apollo hunted Daphne so, Only that she might laurel grow; And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a nymph, but for a reed. What wond’rous life in this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find, Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root, Casting the body’s vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide; There like a bird it sits and sings, Then whets, and combs its silver wings; And, till prepar’d for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. Such was that happy garden-state, While man there walk’d without a mate; After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet be meet! But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share To wander solitary there: Two paradises ’twere in one To live in paradise alone. How well the skillful gard’ner drew Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new, Where from above the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run; And as it works, th’ industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs!

as if a round apple presented itself to my hand, a ripe, golden apple with a soft, cool, velvety skin - thus the world presented itself to me - as if a tree nodded to me, a wide-branching, strong-willed tree, bent for reclining and as a footstool for the way-weary: thus the world stood upon my headland - as if tender hands brought me a casket - a casket open for the delight of modest, adoring eyes: thus the world presented himself before me today - not so enigmatic as to frighten away human love, not so explicit as to put to sleep human wisdom - a good, human thing was the world to me today, this world of which so many evil things are said!

I always marvel at this sort of woman, the sort who accepts total, monogamous devotion like it's her birthright. To my experience, there's nothing that unites these women - they can be smart as pinstripes or dumb as fake fur, they can have classic beauty of a perfectly ripe Honeycrisp apple or the compelling plainness of pie. They tend to be skinny: perhaps their performance of appetite suggests comfort with deprivation. Maybe they dupe men into thinking that they, like air plants, don't need nourishment to survive. I suspect what makes these women irresistible is this: the women who impassion men are those who can maintain that tension between being in love and succumbing to it.

Cassandra continued her obstacle course along the wall, hoping to find a gate or a door, anything permitting entry. The sun was rising in the sky and the birds had relaxed their singing. The air was heavy with the sweet, swooning perfume of a climbing rose. Although it was autumn, Cassandra was becoming hot. To think she had once imagined England a cold country to which the sun was a stranger. She stopped to wipe sweat from her brow and bumped her head on something low-hanging. The gnarled bough of a tree reached armlike over the wall. An apple tree, Cassandra realized, when she saw that the branch bore fruit- shiny, golden apples. They were so ripe, so deliciously fragrant, that she couldn't resist picking one.

... the exotic spices arriving daily from the East Indies and the Americas, the crates of sweet oranges and bitter lemons from Sicily, the apricots from Mesopotamia, the olive oil from Naples, the almonds from the Jordan valley... I have seen and smelled these delicacies at market. But does any English person know how to cook with such foods? I think back to my time in France and Italy, of all the delicacies that passed across my tongue. And then to the gardens I've seen in Tonbridge with their raised beds of sorrel, lettuce, cucumbers, marrows, pumpkins. Already the banks are starred bright with blackberries and rose hips, with damsons and sour sloes, the bloom still upon them. Trees are weighted down with green apples and yellow mottled pears and crab apples flushed pink and gold. Soon there will be fresh cobnuts in their husks, and ripe walnuts, and field mushrooms, and giant puffballs.

Most geniuses responsible for the major mutations in the history of thought seem to have certain features in common; on the one hand scepticism, often carried to the point of icon-oclasm, in their attitude towards traditional ideas, axioms and dogmas, towards everything that is taken for granted; on the other hand, an open-mindedness that verges on na- ïve credulity towards new concepts which seem to hold out some promise to their instinctive gropings. Out of this combination results that crucial capacity of perceiving a familiar object, situation, problem, or collection of data, in a sudden new light or new context: of seeing a branch not as part of a tree, but as a potential weapon or tool; of associating the fall of an apple not with its ripeness, but with the motion of the moon. The discoverer perceives relational patterns or functional analogies where nobody saw them before, as the poet perceives the image of a camel in a drifting cloud.

They began with a winter soup, lovingly cooked in a copper pot with a shinbone left over from Sunday lunch- But the witch brought in a light bouillon, simmered with the sweetest of baby shallots and scented with ginger and lemongrass and served with croutons so crisp and small that they seemed to vanish in her mouth- The mother brought in the second course. Sausages and potato mash; a comforting dish the child always loved, with sticky onion marmalade- But the witch brought in a brace of quail that had been gorged on ripe figs all their lives, now roasted and stuffed with chestnuts and foie gras and served with a coulis of pomegranate- Now the mother was close to despair. She brought dessert: a stout apple pie, made to her mother's recipe. But the witch had made a pièce montée: a pastel-colored sugared dream of almonds, summer fruit, and pastries like a puff of air, all scented with rose and marshmallow cream, and served with a glass of Château d'Yquem-

I could smell the rich dark scent- she uses only the finest beans, shipped from a plantation off the west coast of Africa- the chocolate infused with spices, the names of which sound like islands in a vanished archipelago. She tells me their names- Tonka. Vanilla. Saffron. Clove. Green ginger. Cardamom. Pink peppercorn. I have never travelled, père, and yet those names take me elsewhere, to undiscovered islands, where even the stars are different. I pick up the chocolate. It is perfectly round, a marble between my fingers. I used to play marbles once, long ago, when I was a boy. I used to put them to my eye and turn them round and round, to see the colors winding through the glass. I put the chocolate, whole, in my mouth. The red glaze tastes of strawberries. But the heart is dark and soft, and smells of autumn, ripe and sweet; of peaches fallen to the ground and apples baked in cinnamon. And as the taste of it fills my mouth and begins to deliver its subtleties, it tastes of oak and tamarind, metal and molasses.

And although black civil rights leaders like to point to a supposedly racist criminal justice system to explain why our prisons house so many black men, it’s been obvious for decades that the real culprit is black behavior—behavior too often celebrated in black culture. In April 1865, one hundred years before Johnson addressed Howard University graduates, the abolitionist Frederick Douglass spoke at a Boston gathering of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society on a similar theme. “Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, ‘What should we do with the Negro?’” said Douglass. “I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall.…And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs!

I’ve been allowed to read more grown-up books lately. Eva’s Youth by Nico van Suchtelen is currently keeping me busy. I don’t think there’s much of a difference between this and books for teenage girls. Eva thought that children grew on trees, like apples, and that the stork plucked them off the tree when they were ripe and brought them to the mothers. But her girlfriend’s cat had kittens and Eva saw them coming out of the cat, so she thought cats laid eggs and hatched them like chickens, and that mothers who wanted a child also went upstairs a few days before their time to lay an egg and brood on it. After the babies arrived, the mothers were pretty weak from all that squatting. At some point, Eva wanted a baby too. She took a wool scarf and spread it on the ground so the egg could fall into it, and then she squatted down and began to push. She clucked as she waited, but no egg came out. Finally, after she’d been sitting for a long time, something did come, but it was a sausage instead of an egg. Eva was embarrassed. She thought she was sick. Funny, isn’t it?

Beneath the window, set between gravel walkways, a few woody lavenders, etiolated rosemary bushes, and ornamental thyme made up the aromatherapy garden that he had seen described in the brochure. Beyond this, however, running a long arc down the gentle slope of lawn, camellias in unrestrained bloom provided an alternative tonic. The lawn gave way to a flower garden, itself fringed by a wood, so that the incarcerated had at least the consolation of a pleasant enough outlook. Gabe stood in front of the fireplace and examined the painting that hung above the mantelpiece. It was a still life. It showed two apples and a brown and white feather laid on a velvet cloth on a table placed by a window. Although the picture was not, Gabriel assumed, of the highest artistic value, and was cheap enough to reside at Greenglades, and though it could not be said to have a photographic reality, and though he suspected it of not being "good," he was drawn to look at it and could see the ripeness of the velvet, reckon the bursting crispness of the apples, and the feather had a certain quality that he had never before observed, just as the painted window offered something that he had failed to notice at all when looking through the real one: the texture, the tone, the way the light fell, the very glassness of the glass.

That baking day was the third day Mrs G had shut herself away in the stillroom, dosing herself with medicinal waters. As I rolled the pastry I lived out a fancy I had nourished, since the first apple blossom pinked in May- the making of the perfect dish. Next day was All Hallows Eve, or Souling Night as we called it, and all our neighbors would gather for Old Ned's cider and Mrs Garland's Soul Cakes. After the stablemen acted out the Souling play, the unmarried maids would have a lark, guessing their husband's name from apple pairings thrown over their shoulders. So what better night, I thought, for Jem to announce our wedding? At the ripe age of twenty-two years, the uncertainties of maidenhood were soon to pass me by. Crimping my tarts, I passed into that forgetfulness that is a most delightful way of being. My fingers scattered flour and my elbows spun the rolling pin along the slab. Unrolling before my eyes were scenes of triumph: of me and Jem leading a cheery procession to the chapel, posies of flowers in my hand and pinned to Jem's blue jacket. In my head I turned over the makings of my Bride Cake that sat in secret in the larder- ah, wouldn't that be the richest, most hotly spiced delight? And all the bitter maidens who put it underneath their pillows would be sorrowing to think that Jem was finally taken, bound and married off to me.

And what of all these spices? They're worth a pretty fortune." She waves a juddering arm across the table, at the tins and glass jars and earthenware pots. All at once a shaft of thin northern light swoops over them, jolting them into luminous life: bubbled glass jars of briny green peppercorns, salted capers, gleaming vanilla pods, rusted cinnamon sticks, all leaping and glinting. The sudden startling beauty of it, the palette of hues--ocher, terra-cotta, shades of earth and sand and grass---the pale trembling light. All thoughts of running a boardinghouse vanish. I reach for a jar, lift its cork lid. The scent of bark, earth, roots, sky. And for a second I am somewhere else. "The mysterious scent of a secret kingdom," I murmur. The jar contains little pellets, brown, spherical, unexotic. How marvelous that something so plain can have such an enthralling perfume, I think. "Oh, Miss Eliza. Always the poetess! It's only allspice." Cook gives a wan smile and gestures at the ceiling, where long bunches of herbs hang from a rack. Rosemary, tansy, sage, nettles, woodruff. "And what of these? All summer I was collecting these and they still ain't properly dry." "May I lower it?" Not waiting for an answer I wind down the rack until the drying herbs are directly in front of me---a farmyard sweetness, a woody sappy scent, the smell of bruised apples and ripe earth and crushed ferns.

I remembered meeting the Dharma Raja’s gaze and wreathing his neck with a wedding garland of sweet marigold and blood red roses. Death clung to him subtly, robbing the warmth of his eyes and silvering his beauty with a wintry touch. And yet, I saw how he was beautiful. It was his presence that conjured the brilliant peacock shades of the late-season monsoon sky. It was his aura that withered sun-ripe mangos and ushered in the lush winter fruits of custard apple and singhora chestnuts. And it was his stride that adorned the Kalidas Mountains with coronets of snow clouds. His hands moved to my shoulders, warm and solid, and his arms were a universe for me alone. He had enthralled me, unwound the seams of my being until I was filled with the sight of him and still ached with want. “I hoped you would choose me,” he said. I blushed, suddenly aware of my unbraceleted arms and simple sari. “I have no dowry.” He laughed, a hesitant, half-nervous sound that did not match his stern features. “I don’t care.” “Then what do you want from me?” “I want to lie beside you and know the weight of your dreams,” he said, brushing his lips against my knuckles. “I want to share whole worlds with you and write your name in the stars.” He moved closer and a chorus of songbirds twittered silver melodies. “I want to measure eternity with your laughter.” Now, he stood inches from me; his rough hands encircled my waist. “Be my queen and I promise you a life where you will never be bored. I promise you more power than a hundred kings. And I promise you that we will always be equals.

Notwithstanding the pressure in the room, this was always an emotional moment for Grace Lyndon, when someone was experiencing a scent she had created. When Grace was a little girl, her mother became very sick and lost her ability to hold down food, and in her final days lost her sight. But her sense of smell remained, strong as ever, and young Grace would bring to her mother's bedside fresh cut flowers, lilac and iris and tea rose, the sweet scents infusing the room with light and earth and memories long forgotten, and Grace brought in special foods to smell, like warm orange-ginger rolls, glazed and fragrant as winter holiday mornings, and cotton linens, laundered in lavender water and line-dried so you could smell the sun in them, and slices of ripe apples, a scent so perfect that in the end, it made her mother cry bittersweetly.

The estate looked vast and prosperous- on the surface, at least. Bella Vista was stunningly lovely, the orchards well tended and clearly productive. If there was a place in the world that was closer to heaven, she wasn't aware of it. Bella Vista- Beautiful View. A panorama view of the orchards, herb and flower fields radiated outward from the patio. The scents of ripe apples, lavender and roses rode the breeze, mingling with the mind-melting aroma of Isabel's fresh-baked croissants.

Granny’s Granola Bars Serves: 10 bars 2 ripe bananas 1 Granny Smith apple, chopped into small pieces 1 cup raisins 1 cup chopped walnuts ½ cup raw sunflower seeds ¼ cup unhulled sesame seeds 1 teaspoon cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice 2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats Preheat the oven to 300˚F. Mash bananas to a soft consistency. Add remaining ingredients. Add a small amount of nondairy milk if needed to ease stirring. Lightly oil a 9 × 9-inch baking pan or glass dish. Pour mixture into baking dish and press to firm consistency. Bake mixture for 40 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool. Cut into bars. Wrap with aluminum foil and place in the fridge or freezer. PER SERVING: CALORIES 272; PROTEIN 7g; CARBOHYDRATE 34g; TOTAL FAT 14g; SATURATED FAT 1.5g; SODIUM 3mg; FIBER 5g; BETA-CAROTENE 15mcg; VITAMIN C 4mg; CALCIUM 63mg; IRON 5.6mg; FOLATE 37mcg; MAGNESIUM 66mg; ZINC 1mg; SELENIUM 6mcg

Nutritarian Granola Serves: 10 ½ cup raw almond or cashew butter 1 medium apple, peeled and quartered 1 ripe banana 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg 1½ teaspoons alcohol-free vanilla flavoring 4 cups old-fashioned rolled oats 1 cup chopped raw walnuts or pecans ½ cup raw pumpkin seeds ¼ cup unhulled sesame seeds ⅓ cup unsweetened shredded coconut 1 cup currants Preheat the oven to 225˚F. Place the nut butter, apple, banana, cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla flavoring in a high-powered blender and blend until smooth and creamy. In a large bowl, mix the oats, nuts, seeds, and coconut. Add the blended mixture and toss to combine. Transfer the mixture to two parchment-lined baking pans. Do not overcrowd the pans so the granola can bake evenly. Bake for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. After baking, stir in currants. Allow to cool, then store in an airtight container. PER SERVING: CALORIES 337; PROTEIN 9g; CARBOHYDRATE 38g; TOTAL FAT 19.1g; SATURATED FAT 4g; SODIUM 5mg; FIBER 6.4g; BETA-CAROTENE 15mcg; VITAMIN C 2mg; CALCIUM 58mg; IRON 8.9mg; FOLATE 19mcg; MAGNESIUM 91mg; ZINC 1.7mg; SELENIUM 3.7mcg

Banana Cocoa Muffins Serves: 24 15 Medjool or 30 regular dates, pitted ½ cup coconut water 2 cups garbanzo bean flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder ¾ cup natural cocoa powder 1 tablespoon Ceylon cinnamon 1½ cups chopped apple 6 very ripe bananas 2 teaspoons alcohol-free vanilla flavoring ⅓ cup cooked garbanzo beans 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar 1 cup walnuts, chopped ½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut 9 ounces wilted chopped fresh spinach Soak the dates in coconut water for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Line muffin tins with paper liners and wipe them very lightly with olive oil. Whisk together in a small bowl the garbanzo bean flour, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa, and cinnamon. In a high-powered blender, purée the dates and the soaking coconut water, apples, bananas, vanilla, garbanzo beans, and apple cider vinegar until smooth. Pour into a large mixing bowl and stir in the walnuts, coconut, and spinach until evenly distributed. Then fold in the flour mixture until just combined. Do not over mix. Fill the muffin tins almost full and bake for 55 to 65 minutes, rotating in the oven after 35 minutes. They are done when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the muffins cool in the muffin tins on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from the tins to the wire rack and cool completely. Refrigerate or freeze in resealable plastic bags. PER SERVING: CALORIES 163; PROTEIN 4g; CARBOHYDRATE 30g; TOTAL FAT 5.1g; SATURATED FAT 1.6g; SODIUM 68mg; FIBER 4.9g; BETA-CAROTENE 622mcg; VITAMIN C 6mg; CALCIUM 46mg; IRON 1.5mg; FOLATE 43mcg; MAGNESIUM 64mg; ZINC 0.8mg; SELENIUM 7.7mcg

How to Taste An Apple: I find it mildly irksome to see someone eating an apple while walking down the street, unaware that a body sense event is happening, and perhaps focusing on something else entirely at the time. Ideally, one should select a fruit of known ripeness and take it with a plate and knife to a quiet place. Slice it to mouth-size portions, either all at once or as you eat, and when the slice is in the mouth, concentrate on the mouthfeel and the flavor. It may immediately enliven the taste buds or slowly unfold its complexity. Analyze the sugar, tannin, acid, and aroma of what you taste and if it is elusive do not despair: the magic of the taste of a particular variety may be its elusiveness. If given full attention, the act of eating an apple can become a mind-expanding experience.

I opened the bag, and the scent of apples, sweet and ripe, wafted up. They were brown and shriveled and resting in a Pyrex bowl. The sight was incongruent with the wonderful fragrant smell. "I have a fantastic tree, cooking apples really---too tart to eat. But I freeze a lot. Jane mentioned last week that she loved applesauce, so I defrosted my last batch for her. They make the best applesauce I've ever had." "Thanks." "Do you know how to make applesauce?" "I can figure it out." "It's super easy; just add sugar and stew them over a low heat." And cinnamon? You should also add nutmeg or a little chili, but not too much.

Fruit trees offered ripe treats from apples to fat pomegranates bursting with seeds, to various citruses. Mist floated above soil near the center, and frost coated the petals of the flowers on the right. The artist’s palette was dark, yet muted. The scene alive, yet frozen. Summer inhabited one side and it was ice-kissed with winter on the other.

Very fair she was still in my eyes, when I had last seen her, though little like the Entmaiden of old. For the Entwives were bent and browned by their labour; their hair parched by the sun to the hue of ripe corn and their cheeks like red apples. Yet their eyes were still the eyes of our own people.

Pretend for a moment that you are in the horrifying situation of watching one of your children being pulled out to sea in a riptide. Would you just go on eating your lunch? No way. The first thing you would do is to scream to get help rescuing your child. You would simultaneously get all other children out of the water as you dive in and try to rescue the missing child, even knowing the danger and that it is probably too late. If you were sensible enough not to swim out or fortunate enough to get back to shore safely, grief would promote endless rumination about what you could have done to prevent the loss. This would help prevent a repetition with other children. Your sobbing would signal your need for help and warn others about the danger. When a child dies of cancer or pneumonia, speculating about what you might have done to prevent it is mostly useless. However, the tendency to blame is built in, so people do it anyway, blaming themselves, doctors, anyone who was involved. Those motives can create marvelous initiatives, Mothers Against Drunk Driving being a spectacular example. Every community has organizations dedicated to preventing the kind of sickness or accident that carried off a loved member of the community. In our ancestral environment, loved ones must often have simply not returned to camp. Searching for them would have been essential. A loss creates mental preoccupation and a search image tuned to detect relevant cues. In the weeks after a loss, bereaved individuals often think that they see or hear the lost loved one. Tiny random sounds or sights are misinterpreted as the person’s voice or form. Visual and auditory hallucinations arise. Such experiences are sometimes interpreted as wish fulfillment, but a more plausible explanation is that they are products of a search image that makes it easier to find the missing person. False alarms in such a system would be normal, useful, and experienced as ghosts. Anniversary reactions are also common and fascinating. Many people occasionally experience sadness that seems unaccountable, until they realize it is the anniversary of a loss. I doubt that anniversary reactions are adaptive in general; however, in ancestral environments many opportunities and dangers recur with seasonal regularity. So smelling overly ripe apples in an orchard may bring back vivid memories of a fall long ago.

Turmeric Smoothie TOTAL COOK TIME: 5 MINUTES | MAKES 1 SERVING Turmeric, which has recently been celebrated for its immune-boosting properties, has figured prominently in the Okinawan diet for hundreds of years. Okinawans use it as both a cooking spice and a tea, and scientists have started to study it for its anticancer, anti-inflammatory, and antiaging properties. Its main compound, curcumin, has shown in both clinical and population studies to slow the progression of dementia—a reason why Okinawans may suffer much lower rates of Alzheimer’s disease than Americans. Turmeric regulates FOXO3 (a gene associated with longevity that reduces inflammation in the body), making our cells more efficient. Traditionally, Okinawans sliced and dried turmeric and then steeped it to make tea. But today most people rely on powdered turmeric for their daily cooking and drinking. You can enjoy this smoothie as a snack, a light meal, or even a dessert. 1 ripe banana 1 apple, cored and cut into a few pieces 1 teaspoon turmeric powder 1 cup vanilla soy milk 5 cups of ice Blend all ingredients in a high-speed blender. Serve immediately.

Jeanie breathed in the warm hay and dry-leaf smell of the farm. A hint of woodsmoke and over-ripe apples drifted through the air. The whole place smelled like Logan. Someone should bottle it. Eau de Sexy Farmer.

It is improbable that in fifty—perhaps twenty—years from now the deposit channel will have the central role in the financial system that it has occupied for centuries by virtue of its link to payments. The payment system is ripe for disruptive innovation, but to date entrants—such as PayPal, Square and most recently Apple Pay—have preferred to shelter under the umbrella of the high charging structure established by inefficient incumbent banks. This cautious sharing of oligopoly profits will not persist indefinitely, and in time the payment system will become an inexpensive utility distinct from the deposit channel. The

The Bancroft Peach Bellini 2 ripe peaches, seeded and diced 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 teaspoon sugar 1 bottle chilled Prosecco sparkling wine Directions Place the peaches, lemon juice, and sugar in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade and process until smooth. Press the mixture through a sieve, and discard the peach solids in the sieve. Place two tablespoons of the peach puree into each champagne glass and fill with cold Prosecco. Serve immediately. Hawaiian BBQ Short Ribs 1 package pork spare ribs 4 tablespoons of your favorite brand of dry rib rub 1 cup light brown sugar 2 cups Welch’s Essentials Orange, Pineapple, Apple Juice Cocktail 1 16-ounce can chunked pineapple, with its juice 4 tablespoons light yellow mustard 1 cup Hawaiian BBQ sauce Directions Sprinkle both sides of the spare ribs with dry rib rub and light brown sugar.

Verjuice Collect ripe crab apples and leave them in a plastic bag to sweat. After a few days press out the juice and then bottle it, leaving cotton wool in the top as it will ferment because of the natural yeasts. It will be ready in about a month and makes a traditional substitute for lemon juice. It is particularly good in salad dressings and stir fries. After

3/4 cup rolled oats 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon Pinch of sea salt 1/4 cup fresh berries (optional) 1/2 ripe banana, sliced (optional) 2 tablespoons chopped nuts, such as walnuts, pecans, or cashews (optional) 2 tablespoons dried fruit, such as raisins, cranberries, chopped apples, chopped

The saucy Miss Tottenham slipped the strawberry into her delectable mouth, all the while looking at Cyrus. His thigh muscles tensed inside the velvet prison of his breeches. Hot pleasure shot through his body at the sight of the red berry slipping through her lips. Adding to his misery, a spurt of juice from the tender morsel painted her bottom lip red. He nearly groaned. Tradition named the apple as the fruit of man's downfall, but tonight he'd argue mightily for the dangers of a ripe strawberry on a certain woman's lips.

Dear Alice, remember that an apple falls when it’s ripe. Pluck it too soon, and it’s sour; too late, and it’s rotten. Nature’s cycles progress step by step, without shortcuts. In nature, it’s the process that dictates, not time.

The education market is ripe, and I mean falling-off-the-tree ripe, to be disrupted.

I have discovered all winds blow cold at last, and the leaves, so pretty, so many, vanish in the great, black packet of time, in the great, black packet of ambition, and the ripeness of the apple is its downfall.

Don’t bite the apple, Eve,” replayed in my head like a broken record, but the peach standing before me was too ripe not to taste. 

But of course, what you see from the outside never tells the story of a family. It’s a ripe, red apple. When you cut it open, there could be anything inside. Crisp, healthy flesh . . . or rot and worms.

Most beautiful of things I leave is sunlight, then come glazing stars and the moon's face, then ripe cucumbers and apples and pears.

Have you ever tried food?” I ask. “What would be the point?” He hasn’t. He’s never bitten into a ripe apple or twirled pasta around his fork, or had a bite of bread with melted butter.

Ever since I was a child, it was my favorite time of year—a season of absolute magic. The air smelled of ripe apples and dying leaves and wood smoke. The wind made you ache in some place deeper than your bones.

A fresh fig is a coy fruit. Fresh figs hide out a bit. Their exterior is sober, matte--- a dignified, often dusky, royal purple. But crack one open, and you have a pulpy, fleshy kaleidoscope of seeds. A ripe fig, like the cheeks of a well-fed child, should give slightly when you squeeze. Figs make an excellent transition from summer to autumn cuisine. This is particularly useful this time of year in Provence, when we are eating in the garden one day, turning on the heat the next. Fresh figs are at home alfresco, in a rocket salad with Golden Delicious apples, pine nuts, and picnic cheeses or roasted with slices of Roquefort and a drizzle of honey to begin a fall fireside dinner.

I have dreamed of accomplishment. I have fed ambition. I have traded nights of sleep for a length of work . . . and the ripeness of the apple is its downfall.

Was this excessive, carrying books to her next life, most she had read multiple times and would likely never read again, her eyes weary after only a page or two? She ran her fingertips along the familiar spines, some slick and smooth, others as rough as burlap, each tied to a vivid memory. Only a few lines from any of the chosen books possessed the power to transport her to a time when life was as ripe as a low-hanging apple. Pieces of herself lived inside those pages; the words and ideas had helped craft Bernice into the person she became. No, she couldn't imagine leaving them behind.