28 Quotes & Sayings By Julia Glass

But people, as Alan had once reflected to Greenie, were not at all like recipes. You could have all the right ingredients, in all the right amounts, and still there were no guarantees. Or perhaps they were like recipes, he pondered now, and the key to success was in finding the ingredients you had to remove, the components that turned all the others bitter, excessively salty, difficult to swallow; even too jarringly sweet. He had seen Greenie clarify butter, wash rice, devein shrimp, and meticulously snip the talons from artichoke leaves. . Julia Glass

Time plays like an accordion in the way it can stretch out and compress itself in a thousand melodic ways. Months on end may pass blindingly in a quick series of chords, open-shut, together-apart; and then a single melancholy week may seem like a year's pining, one long unfolding note. Julia Glass

Ready how? Who's ever ready for anything important? Julia Glass

The older Kit gets, the less confident he feels judging other people as spouses or parents. These days, driving past the home of the Naked Hemp Society, he finds himself more curious than contemptuous about their easily ridiculed New Age ways. Why shouldn't they nurse their babies till age four? Why shouldn't they want to keep their children away from factory-farmed meats, from clothing soaked in fire-retardant chemicals, from dull-witted burned-out public school teachers whose tenure is all too easily approved? Why not frolic naked in the sprinkler---under the full moon, perhaps? Why not turn one's family into a small nurturing country protected by a virtual moat? . Julia Glass

To love me, my family does not need to understand me. Julia Glass

To have children is to plant roses, muguets, lavender, lilac, gardenia, stock, peonies, tuberose, hyacinth ...it is to achieve a whole sense, a grand sense one did not priorly know. It is to give one's garden another dimension. Perfume of life itself. Julia Glass

I guess that’s how well you know me. You think I like hearing this news.”“ I’m sorry. This is selfish. I just need to tell someone … outside my life. Get it out of myhead, to keep from going nuts, but somewhere safe.” She sees me as safe? This brings tears to my eyes.“ I trust you, Clem. Are you pissed? Julia Glass

When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be. Julia Glass

Clever how the cosmos can, in a single portent, be ingratiating yet sadistic. Julia Glass

I come from a culture of handwringers, vengeance seekers, people who name children after ancestors by rote -- first child, paternal grandfather, second child, maternal, and on and on and on. Julia Glass

SWEET POTATO BISQUE WITH CRABMEATGRAPEFRUIT ICE IN A SWEET TORTILLA CRISPLAMB SEARED IN ANCHO CHILI PASTE ON POLENTA TWO CHUTNEYS: PEAR & MINTASPARAGUS FLANAMERICAN GOAT CHEESE, EAST & WEST, WITH RED-WINE BISCUITSAVOCADO KEY LIME PIEPINON TORTA DE CIELO & CHOCOLATE MOCHA SHERBETShe'd invented the cake just for tonight; the sherbet came from Julia Child, a remarkably simple confection made with sour cream. Torta de cielo was a traditional wedding cake from the Yucatan, slim and sublime, light but chewy, where pulverized almonds stood in for flour. This time, instead of almonds, Greenie used the fat, velvety pignoli she ordered from an importer on Grand Street, mincing them by hand to keep them from turning to paste. She did not know whether you could tell the best Italian pine nuts from those grown in New Mexico, but, she caught herself thinking, and not without a touch of spite, she might soon find out. . Julia Glass

None of this Mad Mario showmanship- orange clogs and Bermuda shorts fit for Babar, sweetbreads garnished with squash blossoms stuffed with cheese from the milk of Angora goats who live in the Pyrenees. Litchi sorbet veined with coconut milk and honey from Crete. Julia Glass

Americans refused to see accidents as accidental. They did not comprehend they while tragedy always exacts a formidable price, it rarely incurs a debt. Julia Glass

I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed. Julia Glass

It was Friday, so the farmers' market was in full autumnal swing, a sea of potted chrysanthemums and bushel after bushel of apples, pears, Fauvist gourds, and pumpkins with erotically fanciful stems. On one table stood galvanized buckets of the year's final roses; on another, skeins of yarn in muted, soulful purples and reds. Walter loved this part of the season- and not just because it was the time of year his restaurant flourished, when people felt the first yearnings to sit by a fire, to eat stew and bread pudding and meatloaf, drink cider and toddies and cocoa. He loved the season's transient intensity, its gaudy colors and tempestuous skies. . Julia Glass

Before heading back up the road, she had turned for a moment toward the sea. In the late afternoon light, the water was gray wrinkled with orange. Tiger water, she called it when it looked like that. Rhino water was smooth and leaden, dull as smoke. But her favorite was polar bear water, when the moon hung low and large, as if too heavy to rise very high, and scattered great radiant patches, like ice floes, across a dark blue ocean. Julia Glass

God, Lou. Don’t you think I want you to have what you want?”“ You’re my sister. You’re supposed to want those things for me.”“ You can’t have it both ways, Lou. When things get bad, you can’t call me–which I’m gladabout, I am! –you can’t do that and then imply I don’t give a shit about you.”“ That’s what I used to think. Julia Glass

And there was the moon. A warm and visible greeting, a beacon of relief. Full, unshrouded, its edges crisp. It looked like an airy wafer- what were those crackers that came in the big green tin? She stared at the moon and thought about the fact that she was breathing. Fact of breathing, fact of life. This she could control: slow down and speed up her breathing, despite the pain in her throat. She'd never really looked at the moon, never really seen how intricate the etchings on its yellowy silver surface. Bowl of a spoon in candlelight. When she'd looked a long time- I see the moon, and the moon sees me- a glimmering ring like a rainbow materialized at the rim. In the memory she still retained, as clear as a framed snapshot, a portrait worn in a locket, Saga stared at the moon that way for hours, and it kept her company, it kept her sane, it kept her in one piece, it kept her alive. It was proof, fact, patience, faith. Julia Glass

I, too, seem to be a connoisseur of rain, but it does not fill me with joy; it allows me to steep myself in a solitude I nurse like a vice I've refused to vanquish. Julia Glass

Hugo planned a five-course meal: smoked duck, oyster stew, roast beef with mashed yams, a salad of apples with beets and blue cheese, then chocolate banana cream pie. Rich, rich, and richer still. Ben made pitchers of martinis and set aside thirty-five bottles of a tried-and-true Napa cabernet, pure purple velvet, and an Oregonian pinot gris, grassy and effervescent. Julia Glass

My own life is wonderful, but if I had to live the life of someone else, I'd gladly choose that of Julia Child or Dr. Seuss: two outrageously original people, each of whom fashioned an idiosyncratic wisdom, passion for life, and sense of humor into an art form that anyone and everyone could savor. Julia Glass

I was ridiculed in public school for being smart. A teacher's pet. Julia Glass

Colorful garments - ball gowns, kimonos, evening pajamas - made from yards upon yards of iridescent silk or velvet. I own an unjustifiable number of such outfits and jump at the chance to wear them. Against the etiquette about which I am otherwise all too conscious, I frequently, and unrepentantly, overdress for the occasion. Julia Glass

I have struggled for decades now with the fear of and resistance to change - mostly in the realms of technology, transportation, and the ways people choose to communicate. If I had a theme song, it would be that lovely song 'I'm Old-Fashioned, ' as sung by Ella Fitzgerald. Julia Glass

To me, stretching the capabilities of my imagination is a crucial aspect of writing fiction; you could think of it as a mental form of athleticism. Julia Glass

My first draft is always way too long my books start out with delusions of 'War and Peace' - and must be gently disabused. My editor is brilliant at taking me to the point where I do all the necessary cutting on my own. I like to say she's a midwife rather than a surgeon. Julia Glass

In my head, at least, the business of spinning stories has no closing time. Twists in my characters' lives, glimpses of their secrets, obstacles to their dreams... all arrive unbidden when I'm getting cash at the ATM, walking my son to camp, singing a hymn at a wedding. Julia Glass