Sonali Dev Quotes

The good news was that he wasn't sixteen anymore and he had this, his art. His food. And if this dinner continued to go the way it was going, if Mrs. Raje stood by her word and gave DJ the contract for her son's fund-raising dinner next month based on tonight's success... well, then they'd be fine.
Mrs. Raje had been more impressed thus far. Everything from the steamed momos to the dum biryani had turned out just so. The mayor of San Francisco had even asked to speak to DJ after tasting the California blue crab with bitter coconut cream and tucked DJ's card into his wallet.
Only dessert remained, and dessert was DJ's crowning glory, his true love. With sugar he could make love to taste buds, make adult humans sob.
The reason Mina Raje had given him, a foreigner and a newbie, a shot at tonight was his Arabica bean gelato with dark caramel. DJ had created the dessert for her after spending a week researching her. Not just her favorite restaurants, but where she shopped, how she wore her clothes, what made her laugh, even the perfume she wore and how much. The taste buds drew from who you were. How you reacted to taste as a sense was a culmination of how you processed the world, the most primal form of how you interacted with your environment.
It was DJ's greatest strength and weakness, needing to know what exact note of flavor unfurled a person. His need to find that chord and strum it was bone deep.

What could be more than being friends? What could be more than what it felt like to wait by the phone to hear that she was okay? More than waiting to discuss every case with her?

This isn't a joke, Emma. You told me you wanted to do this, and now you're turning my work into some sort of mockery?"
"Actually, you're the one who told me I'd want to do this. You're the one who told me I could make this what I wanted to make it, told me to let my anger out so I'd feel better. Now you want to tell me that my feelings are a mockery?

Why was it that it took losing things to recognize the full value of them?

You put your soul into something and people think they can pass judgment on it just like that." She snapped her fingers. "I'll never get used to the critics.

I don't have to be here to do this, she had told herself, and then she'd let her body become whom it needed to be. Unlike

…her entire being suspended between newborn faith and ancient hopelessness.

Ah, fresh young love! It was like the smell of cumin roasting in butter: you couldn't hide it for anything.

Her eyelids had turned into screens that played her memories on a loop.

We are cooper, kanchi. They can bend us and twist us but they can't break us.

How so much pain and such happiness could fit in the tiny space inside her, Ria didn't know.

Dancing is the real plastic surgery," Uma loved to say. "It's what keeps you young.

He'd woken up at four this morning in Emma's hospital room to write down an eggplant roulade with tandoori paneer. The magic was in the Indian thyme and garlic chive foam infused into the paneer.

They were surrounded by people, seemingly enjoying the company, but they kept stealing glances at each other as if everything else were just a distraction. It

But with evil the roots are as deep and branched as the oldest tree. The motivations are such a spiderweb of nature and nurture and choice and anger and greed and hatred all woven into a sticky mess.

Sometimes I don't know exactly how to navigate what I'm feeling. I don't know if what I'm feeling is real or right or how to go on around it. I feel several things about one thing and it's a vortex and I get stuck in it.

You find the most important things in life suddenly. And it's almost funny how ordinary those extraordinary moments feel.

Not that he had come anywhere near attaining her skill at managing hope. She could balance it like a juggler -- let it soar and curb it and pass it from hand to hand. She could spin hope and spin herself through it. Forget mere juggling; she was a veritable trapeze artist with this hope thing.

She had spent a year not talking even as everyone tried to pry words out of her. Not being able to talk was about fear, about being terrified of what might come out, of what you might expose.

Growing up, we were surrounded by stories of women being married off without their consent, and it was always about how they compromised, reconciled, and found love in the end. It was romanticized so much. What an abhorrent thing to tell someone - that your love isn't where your interest lie, or that your parents know what's best for you better than you do.

This isn't the first time you two are meeting, is it?"
He didn't answer that. That wasn't his to tell. Ashna would tell her family and China in her own time, if at all. He just had to do this.
China dropped into a chair, then jumped up again. A whole new wave of understanding suffusing her face. "That's why you asked to be on the show. Oh God, you're Frederick Wentworthing her."
He shouldn't know what that meant but he totally did. "I'm half agony, half hope, Ms. Dashwood." He tried to shrug, but she looked in his eyes and her whole face turned into a giant awwww.
She pressed her hands into her face. "You can't do that to me. You can't quote Persuasion to me."
It was his mother's favorite book. It's where his name had come from. "Listen. I'm not going to force her to do anything. I'm just going to ask, and if she says no, I won't pressure her. I promise."
"Why do I get the feeling you're pretty sure she won't say no?"
"As I said, half agony, half hope.

When I was too young to know better, I dreamed of a white knight. Someone who'd rescue me, protect me, keep me from harm. By the time I found him, all I wanted was for him to know I didn't need protecting.

…what could be better than making love to your wife, than listening to her, rolling around in her incredible mind, drowning in her laughter, and soaking up her love-drenched moans as she came around you?

You make me feel this, this thing inside that makes me me. And I think I might be addicted to that feeling. I crave it. All the time. You know how I crawled into your lap that day? ... I want to be able to do that whenever I want. It makes me whole, Rahul. It makes everything all right. Maybe just for a few moments, but when you hold me, everything falls into place, here.

If you do believe that earning notches in my belt is what I'm trying to do here, then aren't those very notches why you came to me?"
This girl wasn't stupid, just angry. Her mouth pressed into a thin line; she hated that Trisha was right, but she also understood that Trisha was indeed right.
"I came to you because my brother's friend believed that you could cure me, not play chess with my body parts." Trisha could see another painting, a chessboard with scrotums and vaginas, and in place of the king: eyeballs. Well, this was checkmate.

Well, you did walk away from that beautiful creature in the kitchen without so much as a glance, so I don't know about the genius part," the other woman said, and DJ felt his face warm. "You want to go back in there? I'll introduce you. You can celebrate for real."
Both women broke into giggles. DJ almost smiled; maybe he'd overreacted in there a bit.
"No thank you," the good doctor said in that voice of hers. "But thanks for thinking I'm desperate enough to be set up with the hired help."
DJ stepped away from the door, the warmth on his face turning into an angry burn.
The hired help? He had worked at a Michelin-starred restaurant, for crying out loud. For years. People across Paris knew his name.
Who the bloody hell did this woman think she was? Sometimes he really, truly hated rich people.

She couldn't believe she had told him. Now she would forever be a broken pot in his eyes. And yet, speaking those words last night had been like digging shrapnel out of her flesh. She was sore, but the piercing weight of the deeply lodged shards was gone. The relief was indescribable.

She looked at the gold-appointed dashboard. "It's cute."
"The gas guzzler thanks you," he said, not bothering to curb his sarcasm. "She's probably never carried an outstanding surgeon before."
Her only response was a weary look. Obviously, he wasn't the only one dreading the afternoon ahead. But there was something so tired about her eyes that despite himself he felt like an arse. What was it about this woman that made him want to be a prick? Oh yeah, it was the fact that she was a callous snob and she made him feel like- what was the phrase?- ah, the hired help.

Listen very carefully. Because I'm only going to lay this out for you once. I'm no longer the easy prey I once was and if you go up against me I will make sure you end up behind bars. You've fraudulently pocketed the money from the video. Our lawyers already have a criminal suit against you ready to go. Unless you're particularly keen on jail, you will leave my family alone, and you will withdraw the video and return all that money to the people you stole it from."
Julia opened her mouth, but Trisha held up her hand and she closed it. "And if you do one thing to harm DJ"- because suddenly Trisha was sure Julia had something on DJ; her nineties-Bollywood-plot theory didn't seem so farfetched- "I will make sure that every one of the families you've preyed on to make money off their tragedies gets together and sues your ass until every penny you've ever leeched is gone. Now get out of my office. Get out of my building- which by the way is private property. Soliciting business here is illegal. So the next time you think of setting foot here, know that I will have security throw you out on your cowardly, pathetic ass.

Your brother cooks because he wants to comfort people, to show them the pleasure their bodies are capable of experiencing, to make them pause and savor their own existence as they fly through life. You can see it in his face every time someone eats his food... And me? I do it because I want to save lives, take away suffering. Whatever the case, we want to change things around us. Because we want to matter, and we believe that our work makes us matter. The work isn't the end, it's the means for what we really want: to matter.

He put a pan on the stove and roasted the rumali roti quarters for half a minute on each side just until the butter in the dough sizzled, then placed them on a plate and trickled them with truffle oil. Then he placed a paper-thin slice of heart of fennel dusted with roasted cumin over them. In a bowl next to that, he laid out chicken in the simplest Mughlai sauce of steamed onion in cream with the slightest hint of saffron. Finally, he tucked a perfectly curled papad into the bowl.

Why were men such complicated beasts anyway? Relationships felt like full-time babysitting jobs crossed with high-level code cracking.

She could hardly tell him it was because the child had been born a girl, destined from birth to be bound and gagged, to never be free. And she seemed to have sensed it far sooner than most. Sadly, the poor fool seemed to believe that she could actually do something about it.

Wealth comes and goes, Rahul. Coming from adversity and overcoming it makes you better not worse than those who never have to.

her bottle cap popping vagina

This might baffle you, but despite not being a physician, I do have some pride. Although most certainly not enough to withstand the kind of beating you're capable of dealing it. The kind of beating you've repeatedly dealt it from the first time we've met. You're right, I value honesty, so I'll tell you that I make it a practice not to find women who insult me at every opportunity attractive."
Color flooded her cheeks and traveled down her neck. Finally, she stepped away from him, too, and found the back of a chair to clutch. She looked entirely devastated. Had no one ever denied her anything? He hated the hurt in her eyes. But it was done now.
"How is telling you I'm attracted to you an insult?"
He pressed the back of his hand into his forehead. It made him feel like a drama queen in some sort of musical farce. Which this had to be. "Telling me how unworthy I am of your attraction, that's the insulting part. And, no, that's not all it is. Even if you hadn't told me at every opportunity how inferior to you I am... all I do is cook... every assumption you've made about me is insulting. Culinary school is definitely college. And Le Cordon Bleu is one of the most competitive institutions in the world. The fact that that's so wholly incomprehensible to you... that's the insulting part. And it wasn't thrown in my overly privileged lap either. I had to work my bottom off to make it in."
Ammaji had sold her dowry jewels to pay for his application, something her fa

He was hungering for the fight they had never had. The one she owed him, but could never give him.

People think secrets are about lies, or shame. But what secrets are really about is fear.

What is more than being friends?

Once the tears started she didn't know how to stop them. Words and tears - they were the twin gauges of her mental health that took over when she lost control, one drying up, the other oozing from her without consent. She

She wanted to bury what was inside her deeper where it would stop haunting her.

I want you, exactly the way you are today, the way you'll be tomorrow, and fifty years from now. And I want you to want me enough to deal with whatever happens. I can't promise you'll be okay. But without you I will never be okay. And I know that without me you will never be okay either.

Why is it easier to claim those we lost while forgetting those we rescued?

Child, don't wait until it's too late. Lost time is lost forever.

Time. The starkest truth of life – either you didn't have enough or then it went on and on.

DJ, let Trisha look. She's really good at this doctor thing," Ashna said and Trisha Raje grinned at her as though she had just dropped the deepest curtsy in front of her.
DJ picked up the colander filled with okra and moved to the fryer. "As I've already mentioned, my hands are fine. I hope yours are still worth as much as they were last evening." Definitely a petty bastard.
That made her tilt her head in confusion again. Apparently, you needed no memory at all to get through medical school. Or maybe it was he who needed to have his head examined for remembering every word that had come out of her mouth like some fragile, egotistical half-wit.

He could smell the readiness of onion in every one of its stages of cooking and knew exactly what stage worked best for each dish. He could identify the exact rapidity with which milk had to boil before adding the lemon to make the cheese curd separate into paneer. He could sense exactly when to add the tomatoes to tie together the onion, garlic, and ginger so that the curry came together perfectly with the oil separating from it in syrupy rivulets.

Is it always so sensitive?"
He took moments to answer as though it cost him an effort. "It's never been before." Lifting her fingers, he kissed them, and then spoke against them. "It's your hands, they're magic."
Heat rose in her cheeks. "I can't believe I actually asked you if you knew what my hands were worth."
There it was again, that laugh. Deep and husky and perfect. "If only I'd known.

The syntax of prejudice - threaded into conversation with the perfect pauses and facial expressions - was like ciphers and spy codes. The meaning clear to those it was meant for. To everyone else, it was harmless scribbles. Easy enough to deny.