Best 38 quotes of Barbara Delinsky on MyQuotes

Choices are easy when you have nothing to lose.

I can't spend the rest of my life competing for your attention and coming in last.

If you want to disappear, Emily, you can do it most anywhere.

Rain didn't make things messy. People did that all on their own.

What she did have, after raising two children, was the equivalent of a PhD in mothering and my undying respect.

Wolves go after a wounded deer, it is the nature of the beast.

You kids were all in college, and I suddenly saw that I was stuck alone with a man who, all those years later, was still wanting me to be someone I wasn't.

Being friends is different from being lovers. It’s a sea change.

Charlotte Evans was used to feeling grungy. As a freelancer, she traveled on a shoestring, getting stories other writers did not, precisely because she wasn't fussy about how she lived. In the last twelve months, she had survived dust while writing about elephant keepers in Kenya, ice while writing about the spirit bear of British Columbia, and flies while writing about a family of nomads in India.

Clams served on Quinnipeague were dug from the from the flats hours before cooking, and the batter, which was exquisitely light, held bits of parsley and thyme. Other fried clams couldn't compare.

Confidence could be applied like makeup. I knew that for fact.

Confrontation is what happens when you are less than honest and you get caught.

Dorey says the key to chowder is letting the ingredients cure in the pot for a day before dishing it up, which is counterintuitive since fried clams are best right after they're dug. Personally, I think it's the chives in the chowder." Pensive, she studied her empty bowl. "Or the bacon. Or the parsley." Her eyes rose. "Maybe it's just the butter. Since Dorey's chowder is Maine style, more milk than cream, the butter shines.

Especially at a time when one's life was new, roots helped.

Every woman feels. It just takes the right man to make things combust.

French toast? Frittata? Definitely frittata. Leaving the table again, she transferred a small packet from freezer to fridge. It was salmon, home-smoked on the island and more delicious than any she had ever found elsewhere. Smoked salmon wasn't Cecily's doing, but the dried basil and thyme she took from the herb rack were. Taking a vacuum-sealed package of sun-dried tomatoes from the cupboard, she set it on the counter beside the herbs. Frittata, hot biscuits, and fruit salad. With mimosas. And coffee. That sounded right. Eaten out on the deck maybe? No, not on the deck, unless the prevailing winds turned suddenly warm. They would eat here in the kitchen, with whatever flowers the morning produced. Surely more lavender. A woman could never have enough lavender- or daylilies or astilbe, neither of which should bloom this early, but both of which had looked further along than the lavender, yesterday morning, so you never knew.

Home development is about wishful thinking. It's about capturing a dream.

If you no longer have a child, are you still a mother?

I had nothing to fear from my father. Except his disappointment. Which was no small thing.

In the kitchen, she made passionflower tea, turning the jar of loose leaves in her hand while a teaspoon's worth steeped in her mug. The tea was local, made from an herb that rarely grew in New England but did on Quinnipeague. A natural sedative, passionflower was another of Cecily Cole's gems. The tea was still steeping when she decided she was hungry. On impulse, she took a jar of strawberry jam from the cupboard. It, too, was local, put up the fall before by one of the island women. Unscrewing the lid, she pried a layer of wax from the top and, taking a spoon, sampled it straight from the jar. She closed her eyes, isolating the sense of taste for the greatest enjoyment. Strawberries... and vanilla? Eyes popping open, she peered into the glass until she spotted the bean among the berries. A single bean. No surprise there. Vanilla beans came from a variety of orchid that had no business growing up on Quinnipeague, but did. Not only was the flower a more vivid yellow than elsewhere, but the bean was potent.

It feels like forever, like he's lived through the same things as me, like our lives ran parallel for years until last week, when they finally intersected and fused.

Little bits were one of Dorey Jewett's gems: small, sweet lobster knuckles that were sautéed in butter. There were no herbs involved, just enough of a Ritz-cracker coating to absorb the butter for ease of eating.

Nicole craved sweets. Her list included peach pie, rhubarb pie, and pumpkin pie, all of which would be on hand the following week for the Fourth of July cookout on the bluff, so she knew Quinnie cooks would have their recipe cards nearby. In addition to pies, she wanted recipes for blueberry cobbler, apple crisp, molasses Indian pudding, Isobel Skane's chocolate almond candy, and, of course, Melissa Parker's marble macadamia brownies.

Pain is pain. You have a right to feel it.

Parents can be narrow-minded when it comes to the dreams they have for their kids.

Remember the first time you ever came? Tell the truth. You were dreading it." His brown eyes laughed warmly. "What wasn't to dread? A godforsaken island in the middle of the Atlantic-" "It's only eleven miles out." "Same difference. If it didn't have a hospital, it wasn't on my radar screen." "You thought there'd be dirt roads and nothing to do." He gave a wry chuckle. Between lobstering, clamming, and sailing, then movie nights at the church and mornings at the cafe, not to mention dinners at home, in town, or at the homes of friends, Nicole had kept him busy. "You loved it," she dared. "I did," he admitted. "It was perfect. A world away.

She thought about this. She had analyzed it in depth. When you live alone, travel alone, exist solely on the outskirts of other people's lives, you do have time to wonder why what you want most in life is out of reach. You also have the time to tell yourself that you don't want it at all, though whether you can ever be completely convinced is something else.

So, is it harder to dream about what you don´t have than to live in fear of losing what you do?

Some women are born with an instinct for knowing how things work—and what to do when they break.

So where does that leave me? I like hosting the show....It’s become my identity. If that’s gone, where am I?

The important part of growing older was the growing part. Resisting change meant forever standing still, which was a sad way to live.

The question was whether James would love me if I was someone else.

There is no point in doing something unless you do it well.

There, on the far side of of the Atlantic, would be Maine, but despite the shared ocean, her island and this one were worlds apart. Where Inishmaan was gray and brown, its fragile man-made soil supporting only the hardiest of low-growing plants, the fertile Quinnipeague invited tall pines in droves, not to mention vegetables, flowers, and improbable, irrepressible herbs. Lifting her head, eyes closed now, she breathed in the damp Irish air and the bit of wood smoke that drifted on the cold ocean wind. Quinnipeague smelled of wood smoke, too, since early mornings there could be chilly, even in summer. But the wood smoke would clear by noon, giving way to the smell of lavender, balsam, and grass. If the winds were from the west, there would be fry smells from the Chowder House; if from the south, the earthiness of the clam flats; if from the northeast, the purity of sweet salt air.

Waking up Thursday morning to another dreary day and the sense of being physically stuffed, they focused on FISH. While Charlotte interviewed the postmaster about the origin, techniques, and ingredients for his best-in-Maine lobster bakes, Nicole set off to gather recipes for glazed salmon, baked pesto haddock, and cod crusted with marjoram, a minted savory unique to Quinnipeague, and sage.

When the truth emerges, it can’t be ignored. Nor will it wait.

While Nicole drove off in search of recipes for fish hash, clam fritters, and salmon quiche, Charlotte settled in the Chowder House with Dorey Jewett, who, well beyond the assortment of chowders she always brought to Bailey's Brunch, would be as important a figure in the book as any. They sat in the kitchen, though Dorey did little actual sitting. Looking her chef-self in T-shirt, shorts, and apron, if she wasn't dicing veggies, she was clarifying butter or supervising a young boy who was shucking clams dug from the flats hours before. Even this early, the kitchen smelled of chowder bubbling in huge steel pots. Much as Anna Cabot had done for the island in general, Dorey gave a history of restaurants on Quinnipeague, from the first fish stand at the pier, to a primitive burger hut on the bluff, to a short-lived diner on Main Street, to the current Grill and Cafe. Naturally, she spoke at greatest length about the evolution of the Chowder House, whose success she credited to her father, though the man had been dead for nearly twenty years. Everyone knew Dorey was the one who had brought the place into the twenty-first century, but her family loyalty was endearing.

You have a fuchsia heart. And a fuchsia heart doesn't die, it simply bides its time, taking a backseat to pragmatism, all while leaking helpless drops of color here and there. Hence, teal gables, turquoise earrings, and saffron scarves.