Jessica Soffer > Quotes

“Writers are never fully present because they’re always imagining a different version of the way things are happening; imagining the past in a different way, imagining the present in a different way, imagining the future in a different way.”
― Jessica Soffer

“And that's what love is, I suppose. The one thing that is most worth hoping for, and the one thing that's most surprising when it lands. Because it's better. It exceeds hope, makes hope nearsighted.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“I had a lump in my throat the size of a bundt cake pan.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“We became who we became because of what wasn't there”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“I wondered if everyone had a secret like this, something slightly wretched, bent and corroded with time, like a lost key that might not even unlock anything anymore. And if, in the end, it might be the only thing that mattered.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“He loved me, despite me -- which, actually, when you think about it, means because of me.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“Central Park Some people come to the Park because they want to fall in love for the first time, the twelfth time, the final time. Some have been used, widowed, or bored stiff. They have spent the past decade in deep introspection, falling in love with themselves—and no one else—first. Some come for a short respite—roughly twenty blocks west to east, east to west—from a spouse who will not help themselves or from no one home (she even took the dog; you can’t imagine the sudden quiet). The Park is a beating heart, an adagio, a dreamy parenthesis.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“Happiness is an act of faith.”
― Jessica Soffer

“It is something, I think, how everyone believes they’re your favorite. It has something to do with your attention to detail. Just being with you feels like being chosen, winning a prize.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“It was a house littered with eggshells.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“What is the best thing you've ever eaten?"
Poulet rôti. I was sure that my mother was going to say the poulet rôti from L'Ami Louise in Paris because she'd sat next to Jacques Chirac there and he'd said that since she was a chef, perhaps she would cook something for him. And so she did. She went right back into the kitchen and whipped up something fabulous. After that, they used goose as well as duck fat when frying their potatoes, because it had been her way.
I mouthed Poulet rôti into the pillow. But my mother was quiet. She could have made conversation, little noises while she was thinking. But she didn't. Lou didn't care.
"Masgouf," she said. "From an Iraqi restaurant that's closed now."
I sat up. I opened my mouth. I almost yelled, What? But she was still talking.
"I went there with her dad years and years ago." I imagined her jerking her thumb in the direction of my room. "The company was like watching paint dry, but the food was fantastic. Out of this world."
"And?" Lou said.
"And," my mother said, "I went back a couple of years ago, just to see, and it was closed up. Totally empty and sad. One silver tray sat in the middle of the place, I remember. Broke my heart to pieces."
"Masgouf?" Lou said.
I was already out of bed, sockless and by the bookshelf, ripping through the index of The Joy of Cooking, then Cook Everything, then, finally, Recipes from All Over. I found it. "'Traditional Iraqi fish dish, grilled with tamarind and/or lemon, salt, and pepper,'" I whispered, shocked.
"It was heaven," my mother said. "Literally heaven. I've tried to replicate it, I can't tell you how many times."
For a second, I saw spots. I would have bet my life on it- on the poulet rôti.
"You know how they say that life imitates art?" my mother said. "Well, life imitated masgouf. The fish was so good, so tender, and we ate it with our fingers. For a little while, I convinced myself that life could be so simple."
Which meant happiness. Masgouf was my mother's happiness.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“My mother said my father walked out that time, the final time, because she had spent eight hundred dollars at the French Hen in Manchester- she'd special-ordered lox and toro and paddlefish caviar- and he wanted her to be miserable.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“Any true New Yorker knows that every Park lamppost, or “luminaire,” as they’re called, has an inconspicuous metal plate with four numbers: the first two or three indicate the street closest by; the last one conveys which side of the Park you’re in—even numbers mean east and odd mean west.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“remember you turned to me and said, Isn’t this something? Just being here? It is, I said. I remember, with you, the reel stopped running. Like: I am. You are. This is enough. Please stay.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“We'd had two blizzards and it was only December and my mother said if it snowed one more time she would skewer herself on a butterfly knife. That's when it occurred to me that we could move to California, and for about ten seconds, I felt like a genius. We could have avocado trees and Honeybell orange juice every morning. We could drive up the coast on weekends and be treated like royalty at the French Laundry. She could open a new kind of bistro that married haute French cuisine with New American. Alice Waters would make us brunch at her place and would be blown away by the dessert that my mother baked with four varieties of heirloom plum.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“Leaving is the easy part, I wanted to tell her. It's moving on that one gets mired in. It takes years. Decades, actually. It takes tragedy and drama and the most painful part the haunting feeling of what lost when it finally starts hurting less. And yet to this day, if I close my eyes I can smell where I grew up. Burning vegetable skin and floral tea. It pulls tears out of me as if it's the scent itself coming through my nose and rushing down my face.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“Those are juice glasses," she said. I smiled.
"Right," I said. "This is how we drank it in Baghdad."
I put down the steaming glass in front of her and wrapped the oven mitt around the bowl of bamia and brought that too, smelling it on the way.
"Heaven," I said.
I watched her as she ate until I caught myself.
"I haven't made this in years," I said.
Lorca lifted her shoulders, cocked her head, asking why.
"I don't know," I said. "I should have. There's a saying in Arabic: Bukra fil mish mish. 'Tomorrow, when the apricots bloom.' Or, in other words, maybe tomorrow. I kept thinking that. I'd do it tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow."
I was thinking of Lorca, of cooking again. But I thought of Joseph too. No more tomorrows with him.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“Just being with you feels like being chosen, winning a prize.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“It occurs to her that at any particular moment, you can only be most alarmed about one thing.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“You sold three pieces without telling me. It was more money than you’d ever had. You remember being afraid of my response. It felt like celebrating failure.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“The difference between dialogue and conversation is that one you can take back.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“Jaclyn doesn’t call to thank him, but she does let him take her to the orchid show at the Brooklyn Botanical.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“I raced around getting ingredients on the recipe Victoria had given me. I started making the dough for the Iraqi pita, which Violet on YouTube said would need two hours to rise. I used whole-wheat flour, though I'd never seen my mother touch anything but all-purpose or cake; I wasn't taking any chances. I'd do it right. I went to three different bodegas before I finally found mangoes for pickling. They were small and hard as rocks, but I'd try leaving them in a paper bag with a dozen apples to hurry up the ripening. If that didn't work, I'd read something about microwaving them until they were soft, but I was a little worried about ending up with mango mousse. I bought Meyer lemons, thinking the sweetness could be nice, but as soon as I got home, I thought of my mother, her mouth shrinking into a knot: You used Meyer lemons? Like she'd never understand why I did the things I did. I went back out, got snowed on again, bought real lemons on the corner, and then went home and pickled them with ginger, paprika, garlic, and salt. I hoped they'd taste like they'd been marinating for months but I was starting to have a bad feeling. Things weren't exactly working out.
I cut myself twice, accidentally, trying to use the mandoline to slice the onions "as thin as a breath." I made a bed of them that looked like a lattice. I sprinkled thyme on top. The whole thing looked like the side of a house in Scotland where roses grew like weeds. I hoped my mother liked Scotland, but I'd never asked her. I minced garlic until my hand was shaking.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“He wants to ask her how she is but he knows better than to ask a question he will loathe the answer to. He wants to ask her if she’s forgiven him too. That’s really what he needs: a pass on all things.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“When you’re getting dressed, imagine he’s watching you. Showering. Eating cucumbers. Falling asleep. At a bookstore, he’s watching as you run your finger across the paperbacks on a low shelf and your hair is wild and wavy from rain. It makes everything lift.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“The idea of love doesn’t account for a fear of loss. In loving him, I grew afraid of losing him, more and more by the day.”
― Jessica Soffer

“What she wouldn’t do to hold her mother’s slender fingers, chilled from the faucet. What she wouldn’t do to look her mother in the eyes one more time. To mouth, I love you. To draw for her. To rebuild her a world. What she wouldn’t do to be herself again too.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“You remember how we used to sit on the sofa and read the same books so we could talk about them as soon as we both were done.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“Sometimes, when your eyes are closed, I cover my face. Sometimes, my greatest accomplishment in a day is to not wish desperately to go first.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story

“Some days, I watch the rise and fall of the white blanket on your chest and I put my hand above it just to be with you.”
― Jessica Soffer, This Is a Love Story