Meg Donohue > Quotes

“Love is love," I told her, as I tell all of my patients who are ashamed to find themselves shattered by the death of a dog. "Loss is loss.”
― Meg Donohue, Dog Crazy

“I'm convinced that petting a puppy is good luck.”
― Meg Donohue, Dog Crazy

“Her fragility makes her uncomfortable, but it has a familiarity, too, like the biting cold of winter that you only half forget during other seasons.”
― Meg Donohue, All the Summer Girls

“I've always had this feeling," Henry says, "that all dogs are really therapy dogs.”
― Meg Donohue, Dog Crazy

“I have a theory that you get the right dog, the dog you need, for a particular stage in your life.”
― Meg Donohue, Dog Crazy

“Shoot. It's always so disappointing to realize the world goes on without me.”
― Meg Donohue, How to Eat a Cupcake

“Hair, apparently, is the new window to the soul.”
― Meg Donohue, How to Eat a Cupcake

“I liked the idea of adopting a dog that was beyond the puppy stage, a dog with an unknown span of life under his belt. It seemed only fair; he didn't know what he was getting into with me either.”
― Meg Donohue, Dog Crazy

“This house is just a thing .... On your love list, always put the beating hearts at the top.”
― Meg Donohue, Dog Crazy

“It would be a den for overgrown children looking for an indulgence, something nostalgic, something simultaneously luxurious and youthful. Much like a pharmaceutical drug or being in love, Annie's cupcakes would make you feel better.”
― Meg Donohue, How to Eat a Cupcake

“She tilts the computer screen toward Drew "A boy," she says. "Luke." ....
"Luke," Drew repeats. "Bible or Star Wars?"
"Star Wars," Vanessa says, thinking of Teri's engineer husband.”
― Meg Donohue, All the Summer Girls

“Since when had I become such a slave to security? Since when had my dream to be my own boss morphed into merely working for my dream boss?”
― Meg Donohue, How to Eat a Cupcake

“Over the previous few weeks, I'd finally perfected the Julia St. Clair wedding cupcake: classic lemon cake with a hidden heart of my mom's boldly flavoured passion fruit filling, slathered high with Julia's favorite vanilla buttercream icing and glammed up a bit with sparkling curls of candied lemon rind.”
― Meg Donohue, How to Eat a Cupcake

“Sometimes grief cuts us off from the people and activities we love for the simple reason that we don't want to feel happy, which feels too much like moving on.”
― Meg Donohue, Dog Crazy

“I had, I'll admit, effected a certain style - a method, if you will - of cupcake eating. To begin, you remove the cupcake liner carefully so as not to unnecessarily crumble the cake, and set it aside. You then turn the cupcake slowly in your hand, taking bites along the line where cake meets icing, your mouth filling with a perfect combination of both components. Once you've come full circle, you gently twist off the bottom half inch of cake, a move that takes considerable finesse and leaves a delicate sliver of cake - the ideal size for lying flat on your tongue and allowing it to slowly dissolve, building anticipation for that final bite. To finish, you are left with the center cylinder of cake and icing, the cupcake's very heart, sometimes filled with a surprising burst of custard or jam or mousse, sometimes not, but always, always, the most moist, flavorful bite of the entire cupcake. Take a breath before diving into that final, perfect bite; it is to be savored for as long as possible. Finally, of course, you scavenge the crumbs from the cupcake liner you set aside during step one, then ball the liner into your fist and overhand it into the nearest receptacle. Make the shot? You get another cupcake.”
― Meg Donohue, How to Eat a Cupcake

“By contrast, my method of eating a cupcake was quite straightforward - step one: gobble it down one large bite at a time until there's nothing left. That's it.”
― Meg Donohue, How to Eat a Cupcake

“Just because something good happens to someone else doesn't mean something good won't also happen to you”
― Meg Donohue, How to Eat a Cupcake

“The path to such success seemed clear: strategize, focus, and don’t take no for an answer.”
― Meg Donohue, How to Eat a Cupcake

“That’s the rub with dogs. We pack a lifetime of love into a too-short span of time. We have to watch them die. We have to let them go.”
― Meg Donohue, Dog Crazy

“Pedaling down Dune Drive on a red beach cruiser, Dani ahead of her and Vanessa behind her, is a transporting experience. The night is quiet; the air on her face is soft; her hair streams behind her; the stars above are as brilliant as stars in a children's book. They could be nine years old, or fifteen, or twenty-one; they've ridden bikes down Dune Drive at all of those ages and all of the ones in between. There must have been so much more to those summers, but what she remembers are the two weeks she spent in Avalon with Dani and Vanessa—two weeks that always went by too quickly, but that in memory stretch to fill an entire season.”
― Meg Donohue, All the Summer Girls

“Grief, I believe, is cumulative-each experience of loss shaping the size and scope of the next, each loss holding reverberations of the losses a person has experienced over a lifetime. The pain of grief is real, but it's also an echo and an aftershock, the spirits of past emotions rising up to grip your hand again. Examine one loss and you're likely to find another inside of it, and then another inside of that one, all that grief repeating like a set of Russian nesting dolls.”
― Meg Donohue, Dog Crazy

“Back to that very first bite of hidden cupcake in the pantry: a soft cap of vanilla buttercream giving way to light, creamy mocha cake. I kept eating, turning the cupcake slowly in my hand. This was not rich, one-bite-and-you-couldn't-possibly-have-more chocolate. This was refined, complex chocolate cut with a hint of coffee and what else... Currant? Salt? A grown-up, masterful cupcake. It was perfect.”
― Meg Donohue, How to Eat a Cupcake

“Our dogs see us at our best and at our worst, and love us with unparalleled devotion through it all. We share our lives with them. They know our deepest, darkest secrets, things that sometimes our closest human confidants don’t even know. No one should feel ashamed for caring for another being, for feeling heartbroken when a friend is gone. What is more “normal” than love?”
― Meg Donohue, Dog Crazy

“...one of the hardest things about losing someone that you love is that you have to allow yourself to seek and accept comfort in other areas of your life”
― Meg Donohue, Dog Crazy

“California loosestrife: A flowering herb native to California with long spikes of purple flowers whose soapy, herbal aroma inspires strength in the face of adversity”
― Meg Donohue, The Memory Gardener

“It’s not so easy to let go, when what you really want is for the past to remain in the present, to remain secure within your heart.”
― Meg Donohue, The Memory Gardener

“California poppy: A native California wildflower with golden, star-shaped blooms whose soft, citrusy scent inspires hope and healing”
― Meg Donohue, The Memory Gardener

“I scanned the room, knowing it couldn't take long to spot Annie, who had chosen to wear a floor-length 1960s muumuu in a deep shade of turquoise that looked, I had to admit, strikingly lovely against her honey-toned skin. Her dark hair was piled on top of her head, giving her a couple extra inches of height, and spiked through with a gold, rhinestone-encrusted chopstick. Or at least I thought it was a chopstick, but who knew what you called the utensil once it pierced a mound of hair. Perhaps just a stick? Regardless, she looked stunning- like a colorful little bird that surprises everyone with its audacity and out-of-place beauty by landing right in the middle of a bustling city sidewalk.”
― Meg Donohue, How to Eat a Cupcake

“And then one day, as I stood in front of the plant, puzzling over its unusual size and the strange connection that I felt to it, I sensed the rosemary's earthy, green, complex fragrance intensifying, lifting above all of the herbs' scents, pressing so close to me that it felt like breath against my skin, a murmured answer to my questions. The aroma was so strong that I could almost see it, gossamer and shimmering in the air.”
― Meg Donohue, The Memory Gardener

“Geranium: A flowering plant with powerfully fragrant leaves whose sweet, citrusy scent extends a message of hospitality”
― Meg Donohue, The Memory Gardener