Quotessence
Home / Quotes / B Quotes

B Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with B. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All B Quotes

“Broccoli branches, mashed potatoes, spools of gravy, sliced pillowy white bread. It slides on to Sirine's plate, glossy with butter. The meat loaf is oniony and dense under its charred crust, dressed in sweet puddles of ketchup. On the counter there's a food-stained copy of The Joy of Cooking and a red-plaid Betty Crocker cookbook, both from the library. She's impressed. No one ever wants to cook for her; the rare home-dinners at friends' houses are served with anxiety and apologies. But Han just seems excited- his skin slightly damp and pink from the kitchen heat- and intrigued by the new kind of cooking, a shift of ingredients like a move from native tongue into a foreign language: butter instead of olive oil; potatoes instead of rice; beef instead of lamb. He seats her on a pillow on the blue cloth and then sets the dishes before her on the cloth. He sits across from her, one knee skimming hers. They touch and she makes herself lean forward to reach the bowl of potatoes. Their knees graze again. Han tastes each dish while looking at Sirine, so the meal seems like a question. She nods and praises him lavishly. "Mm, the rich texture of this meat loaf- the egg and breadcrumbs- and these bits of onion are so good, and there's a little chili powder and dry mustard, isn't there? It's lovely. And there's something in the sauce... something..." "You mean ketchup?" Han asks. "Oh yes, I suppose that's it." She smiles. "That's remarkable." Sirine smiles vaguely, tips her head, not sure of what he means. "What?" "The way you taste things...." He gestures over the food, picks up a bite of meat loaf in his fingers as if it were an olive. "You know what everything here is- I mean exactly." "Oh no." She laughs. "It's so basic, anyone can do that. It's like you just taste the starting places- where it all came from. Unless of course it's ketchup." He gazes at her, then carefully takes her hand and kisses her fingers. "Then I think you must be of this place." Sirine laughs again, disconcerted by his intensity. "Well, I don't know about that, but I think food should taste like where it came from. I mean good food especially. You can sort of trace it back. You know, so the best butter tastes a little like pastures and flowers, that sort of stuff. Things show their origins”

“Broccoli plants, I read somewhere that it is better for people to eat what is grown in their area from their particular climate and soils for maximum health benefits. Do you know anything about this? “Yes, we know that humans eating locally, say within ten or twenty or a hundred kilometres away, produced from within that area has put up with the same climatic effects that you are likely to experience too and has grown strong in such a climate. Eating this gives those properties, such as making you strong in that particular climate. Do you see?” Yes, I think so, thank you. The broccoli went on: “Like eating something that gives you a built-in resistance to the negative effects of such a climate, such as lots of wind or very hot temperatures. You then inherit this built-in resistance, by consuming a food plant that experiences the climate which you live with in your region.”

“Brochures didn’t disappear when websites arrived. Text messaging did not destroy telefundraising. As tactics, tools and platforms pile up on top of one another, we tech-savvy digital fundraisers have to hone and maintain our ability to wade through these weeds of ever-increasing uncertainty and complexity. We need to be able to embrace it. Plan for it. Leverage it. Tolerance for ambiguity is a sign of maturity in our lives, which includes our fundraising careers, because the digital ecosystem we operate within is constantly evolving. It has a food chain, complete with predators and prey. It has seasonal shifts. It gives and supports life, but it also generates and disposes of waste.”

“Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release... So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love--loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist.”

“Brody felt a shimmy of fear skitter up his back. He was a very poor swimmer, and the prospect of being on top of—let alone in—water above his head give him what his mother used to call the wimwams: sweaty palms, a persistent need to swallow, and a ache in his stomach—essentially the sensation some people feel about flying. In Brody's dreams, deep water was populated by slimy, savage things that rose from below and shredded his flesh, by demons that cackled and moaned.”

“Broke again? Damn you can never be broken. You can fall, you can get bruises, but you can never be broken. You’re living, breathing, and the best example for yourself. You’re made of galaxies, atoms, fire, and so much more. Never underestimate the magic in you. The light inside you can never be handled by the moths. It’s never your mistake, it’s the eyes that are blind to see the love in your eyes, it’s the hearts that don’t understand how your heart beats for them, it’s the ears that can’t hear the screams you try to raise to make them listen and it’s the soul that’s never able to comprehend the message you sent to them.”

“Broke up created a crisis...in every circumstance because a family gets blown apart. We all know what that does to a child. We all know what that does to a woman's identity. But, at the same time, it caused me to start to reevaluate all those things weren't able to stay intact - all the people's attention, all the success, the financial security. It didn't have any value.”