Avis-muir Quote by Diana Abu-Jaber

““On the top rack is a cooled and decorated seven-layered 'opera' cake. Her client- the Peruvian ambassador- had requested a "tropical" theme for a dinner party dessert. Avis had based the decoration on the view through the kitchen window, re-creating in lime, lemongrass, and mint frostings the curling backyard flora, curving foliage shaped like tongues and hearts, fat spines bisecting the leaves.””

Diana Abu-Jaber

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“The streets of Aqaba are shell spirals and, on summer nights, crowded and complicated as a woman's heart.”

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Love and prayer are intimately related.

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“Sometimes when she lies awake her body feels as finely made as a tuning fork. She can hear and smell the most delicate things,…

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The daily writing practice is something I used to hear batted around a lot in writing workshops - which is probably why I dropped out of all the writing workshops. I wish I could take credit for innovating a new approach to writing, but the truth is that I've managed to write books despite myself. I'm lazy and ungovernable and…

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“...tasting a piece of bread that someone bought is like looking at that person, but tasting a piece of bread that they baked is…

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“She thinks of Stanley's colored pencil drawings of theoretical businesses: a cafe, a bookshop, and, always, a grocery store. When she was ten and he was fourteen, he was already working as a bag boy at Publix, reading what their father called "hippie books." He talked about stuff like citrus canker, the Big Sugar mafia, and genetically modified foods and…

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“The loneliness of the arab is a terrible thing; it is all consuming. It is already present like a little shadow under the heart when he lays his head on his mother's lap; it threatens to swallow him whole when he leaves his own country, even though he marries and travels and talks to friends twenty-four hours a day. That…

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“She's been scouted by Ford and Elite- real New York agencies. Micah, the agent for Elite- a tall black guy in silver eyeliner- said that Felice was "heart-stopping." Everyone says that Felice looks like Elizabeth Taylor- all pleased with themselves, as if she were hearing this for the first time. It used to bug Felice: she pictured that squat, henlike…

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Here is something you have to understand about stories: They point you in the right direction but they can't take you all the way…

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“The first time Avis knelt on a chair and stirred eggs into flour to make a vanilla cake, she had an inkling of how higher orders of meaning encircle the chaos of life. Where philosophy, she already intuited, created only thought- no beds made, no children fed- in other rooms there were good things like measuring spoons, thermometers, and recipes,…

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More Avis-muir quotes

“The first time Avis knelt on a chair and stirred eggs into flour to make a vanilla cake, she had an inkling of how higher orders of meaning encircle the chaos of life. Where philosophy, she already intuited, created only thought- no beds made, no children fed- in other rooms there were good things like measuring spoons, thermometers, and recipes,…

Diana Abu-Jaber

“A cookie, Avis told her children, is a soul. She held up the wafer, its edges shimmering with ruby-dark sugar. "You think it looks like a tiny thing, right? Just a little nothing. But then you take a bite." Four-year-old Felice lifted her face. Avis fanned her daughter's eyes closed with her fingertips and placed it in Felice's mouth. Felice…

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“For this cake, I want to mingle the womanly and masculine foods- sugars and meats in particular. The walls must come down. Must temper,…

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“Avis named her business Paradise Pastry because she imagined cathedrals. She thought about the stonemasons, glassblowers, sculptors- who gave lifetimes to the creation of beauty. Every sugar crust she rolled, every simple 'tarte Tatin' was a bit of a church. She consecrated herself to it: later, it became her tribute to her daughter and the unknown into which she'd disappeared.…

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“Years ago, when she'd studied the constructions of stem, blade, stamen, ovule, she loved the infinite possibilities of the plant kingdom- but she had been interested in color, scent, presentation: the beautiful names- cloth-of-gold crocus; ash-leaved trumpet, star-of-Bethlehem; meadow saffron- the loveliness of a blown field of asters or irises, a ring of roses to bed a wedding cake, the…

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“She considers a tray of flaky 'jesuites,' their centers redolent of frangipani cream, decorated with violet buds preserved in clouds of black crystal sugar.…

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“Avis puts aside the 'Saint-Honore' and decides to embark on a new pastry. She's assembling ingredients when the phone rings in the next room.…

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“But Stanley persisted in the kitchen, performing the small yet demanding apprentice's tasks she set for him- removing the skin from piles of almonds,…

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“This morning's pastry poses challenges. To assemble the tiny mosaic disks of chocolate flake and candied ginger, Avis must execute a number of discrete,…

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