C.A. Belmond > Quotes

“You must live every day as if it counts, which means to love all of it. Never let a single one go by without noting the color of the sky, the song of the bird, the face of the one you love best. And don't let yourself get talked out of the things you really care about, don't put off what you want to be.”
― C.A. Belmond, A Rather Lovely Inheritance

“Life's a riddle, child," he said lightly, "but if you can feel the bumps on the road, it means you're alive and in the game. And that is a good place to be.”
― C.A. Belmond, A Rather Charming Invitation

“When people die,' she said softly, 'It doesn't necessarily mean you're ready to give them up.”
― C.A. Belmond, A Rather Lovely Inheritance

“And, if there's one thing I've learned about life, it's that if you just put one foot on the road you'd like to travel, pretty soon you find yourself arriving there.”
― C.A. Belmond, A Rather Remarkable Homecoming

“right.When the man who does the cooking greets you as if he’s genuinely glad that you’ve come to his restaurant, which on the outside looks like a hole-in-the-wall in a crumbling building off a cobbled street, but on the inside is all warmly decorated with red walls and white tablecloths and flickering candlelight; and you are encouraged to work your way slowly through a meal, course by course, with waiters flitting quietly like angels, their presence delicate and unobtrusive when they appear at your side just as you want more wine, or to change the forks and knives (which come from a locked china cupboard’s drawers) as a herald of each new plate of food, which they handle in an unfussy but respectful way as if it were sacred; and when the food is so spectacularly good that it dawns on you slowly that you have died and gone to heaven; and when the wine is cool and soft and works its magic slowly, gently, like the lapping sea—well, you can’t be melancholy at all.You can only be glad that you were born in the first place and are lucky enough to be here on this night, at this table, with this nice person sitting across from you who understands how you feel and is enjoying your company as much as the meal because, for once, the world is full of nothing but people of good will. “Jeremy,”
― C.A. Belmond, A Rather Lovely Inheritance

“There is, after all, a fine line between being pampered and being embalmed.”
― C.A. Belmond, A Rather Lovely Inheritance

“Beautiful, neurotic. Elusive. Accused me of giving up on us first. Not sure of that. She said I didn't make enough effort to change, which is true. I'm to blame for getting testy in the end....Lost my sense of humor, which is deadly. She was surprisingly harsh, once she made up her mind that we were through....Best way to break it off, I suppose, but it left a bad taste. I would have preferred kinder memories.”
― C.A. Belmond, A Rather Lovely Inheritance