Nicole Mones > Quotes

“Did you ever want something so deeply you were scared to let yourself have it? Like a desire so great you know you will never forgive yourself if you fail. So you hang back. And then you wake up one day and you realize if you don't do it now, it will move out of reach forever.”
― Nicole Mones

“An inch of gold can't buy an inch of time”
― Nicole Mones, Night in Shanghai

“If there was one thing she knew by then, by age twenty-two, it was that she had to get far away and stay away. Here in his world she was trapped in an intolerable corner, which seemed to grow tighter and tighter each year. And now no place in America felt right.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“But in the end he didn't love her enough to fight for her.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“That as a human being I'm not necessarily static, but... evolving. That I'm supposed to grow and develop, just like the physical world, the planet, the universe.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“Great food needed more than chefs; it needed gourmet diners.”
― Nicole Mones, The Last Chinese Chef

“So this is one of those times when life is just handing you something, telling you what to do, which way to go. So enjoy it. It'll be fun. I guarantee. I can't guarantee we'll find the goddamn thing, but it'll be interesting. Then if we do find it - if we do- the payoff's huge.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“Everything except the freedom to be what she wanted to be - whatever that was. She had to break away. Whether he liked it or not. She had to.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“I don't believe fundamentally in anything but the awakening of spirit, hope, and freedom.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“Everything looks different. The houses are all these wild colors. The light is strange. It smells primeval. You're on Mars."
"You are talking about driving?" Lin attempted to clarify.
"About wanderlust," she answered.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“Did you really love her? Did you really enter her heart and mind? Or did the two of you always remain outside each other?”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“Breaking some respected boundaries means a torrent of new life.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“She, too, could become someone else. Eventually. Or she'd told herself all these years.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“He looked at her. There was something about her. When he was with her he felt happy, excited; when he was apart from her he found himself wanting to be with her again.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“The high point of every meal was never the food itself, he taught us, but always the act of sharing it.”
― Nicole Mones, The Last Chinese Chef

“I don't hope," he answered, eyes on her. "I never hope. I just live in gratitude for what comes.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“But I get frightened sometimes," she admitted.
"I know. Fear is only fear, though."
"And somehow you live without it."
"No," he corrected her. "You live with it.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“What was more brutal than loss of hope?”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“He'd seen that the young ones died quickly. He'd heard the staff talk about it. When they were ready they let go. Not like adults. Adults took a long time. It was as if adults had built such a thick, petrified husk around them that this alone gave them the strength, the form to hold on. And by the transient revival that so often came to the dying, adults seemed to find a last little puff of life before the end. They had a term for it here at the hospital -- hui guang fan zhao, the reflected rays of the setting sun. Children were lacking in this. They went quickly. He watched as the DOWN light came on and the elevator door slid open.

He had a fear that his life now was just an interlude of hui guang fan zhao, a brief moment before it all came back, worse. And for so long now he had been in this state by himself. He stared up at the digital floor numbers flashing, descending.”
― Nicole Mones, A Cup of Light

“We are fish swimming in a cooking pot”
― Nicole Mones, Night in Shanghai

“He had heard it sure enough, wailing underground in clubs and speakeasies, all through Prohibition, hot, polyphonic, toe-tapping, full of syncopated rhythms and bent, naughty notes—perfect for small and secret spaces.”
― Nicole Mones, Night in Shanghai: A Novel

“from”
― Nicole Mones, Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

“She shrugged, knowing all too well how easy it was to long for a different life, how hard it was to find one's way there.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“Grief is a killer, isn't it?" he said. "Brings you right up to the truth.”
― Nicole Mones, Lost in Translation

“Lia made her way to one of the theme restaurants currently popular in Beijing. She liked them. Some were based on gimmicks. There was a place called Fatty's, for instance, with a big triple-beam scale right inside the door. Anybody who weighed over one hundred kilos got thirty percent off for their whole table.”
― Nicole Mones, A Cup of Light: A Novel

“Five full trains to load. Thirty-nine cars each. And as he watched his cart, his crates, his own personal points of light loaded into the first car, on the first train, he let himself exhale. And then mute, held up by equal parts grief and wonder, he stood witness through all the hours it took the collection to arrive. Nineteen thousand, five hundred fifty-seven crates. One at a time. All night long.”
― Nicole Mones, A Cup of Light: A Novel

“Nothing is ever quite right, is it, after a parent dies? No matter how well things go, something always feels slightly off . . .”
― Nicole Mones, Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

“said. And it’s clear, isn’t it? Anyone can”
― Nicole Mones, The Last Chinese Chef

“For someone grieving, cook with chives, ginger, coriander, and rosemary. Theirs is the pungent flavor, which draws grief up and out of the body and releases it into the air.”
― Nicole Mones, The Last Chinese Chef

“that must feel to all of them like a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
― Nicole Mones, Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels