Earthy Quotes

“Oftentimes I felt ridiculous giving my seal of approval to what was in reality such a natural thing to do, sort of like reinventing the wheel and extolling its virtues. Had parents' intuition sunk so low that some strange man had to tell modern women that it was okay to sleep with their babies?”
― William Sears, SIDS: A Parent's Guide to Understanding and Preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

“When she was younger, Ellie used to believe that her invisibility was a metaphor for something else, assuming it was her awkwardness, her fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. She had thought as she grew older, more confident, wiser, she would outgrow this not being noticed. But lately, Ellie really felt like a ghost. She would be in a place, but not really there. People looked through her, past her. Her invisibility had taken on a life of its own. It wasn't a metaphor anymore, or a defense mechanism or eccentric little tic. She was actually invisible. At least, that was how it felt to her.
Ellie wondered whether her parents were to blame. They were, after all, children of the sixties who had met at a love-in or lie-down or something of that sort, about which Ellie knew little except that a lot of drugs had been involved. Could Ellie's lack of physical presence be a genetic mutation caused by acid or mushrooms? Ellie grew up on their hippie commune among the highest, densest redwoods, where they dug their hands deep into the soil and grew their own food, made their own clothes. So perhaps it is there that the mystery is solved. Ellie indeed was a child of the earth, a baby of beiges and taupes and browns and muted greens. Nature doesn't scream and shout, demanding constant attention, and neither did Ellie. Maybe her invisibility was just her blending right in.”
― Amy S. Foster, When Autumn Leaves

“The smell of dry earth, opening to the rain in the spring. It unlocked me like a key.
Once upon a time, Emmeline.
"Petrichor," Rene said. "The word comes from petra, which means stones, and ichor, the ethereal blood of the Greek gods. Plants release an oil that stops their seeds from germinating when it would be too difficult to survive. The oil soaks into the pores of the stones, and is set free with water. They say it's the smell of waiting, paid off.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Perhaps you can burrow down into the turf and make from the moss a quilt, as the rhyme goes, but I cannot."*

*Pillows made of stones,
Bed of old kings' bones,
Quilt of moss and earth,
Deep beneath the turf,
Sleeps the faerie child,
Dreaming of the wild,
Hidden and unknown.
--- From "Now the Faeries Sleep," a nursery rhyme originating in Kent, c. 1700.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

“The fairy let her go and pulled aside a piece of bright gold-and-pink silk hanging on the wall. Behind it was the fairy's own private room.
She had a soft bed of bright green moss with several iridescent feathers for a counterpane. A shelf mushroom served as an actual shelf displaying an assortment of dried flowers and pretty gewgaws the fairy had collected. There was a charming little dining table, somewhat bold in irony: It was the cheery but deadly red-and-white amanita. The wide top was set with an acorn cap bowl and jingle shell charger. In the corner, a beautifully curved, bright green leaf collected drops from somewhere in the celling much like the water barrel did, but this was obviously for discreet fairy bathing. An assortment of tiny buds, rough seeds, and spongy moss were arranged neatly on a piece of gray driftwood nearby to aid in cleansing.”
― Liz Braswell, Straight On Till Morning

“The following day, the scent Garrance has created is soon dispersed through the restaurant via an electric diffuser---the aromas of citrus, coconut, and ginger hitting me in waves. Ravenous, I set to making a roasted red pepper and garlic hummus, incorporating the urfa biber to see if it really makes a difference. I dip my finger into the dark purplish-brown flakes to taste, and I'm blown away by the earthiness of the flavors. I smack my lips, tasting undertones of raisins, chocolate, and maybe a little coffee.
Even though I've made a crudité platter with some pan-seared padron peppers sprinkled with sea salt and homemade garlic-infused naan, I can't help shoving spoonfuls of the hummus into my eager mouth.”
― Samantha Verant, The Spice Master at Bistro Exotique

“There were a few civilized details, like chairs that looked as though they had been purloined from more modern and elegant domiciles- a red velvet recliner, for instance, which would have been far more at home at Mr. Darling's club than in a cave. Wherever did that come from? Wendy wondered. But the rest of the furniture consisted primarily of things like barrels cut in half with moss for cushions, and the stumps of trees with hastily hammered-on backs. Enormous mushrooms made for tables. Some of the lanterns were fungus as well- softly glowing bluish-green "flowers" that spread in delicate clumps just below the ceiling.
"John would just have a field day with those, I'm certain," Wendy said with a smile.
One large barrel was placed under the end of a hollowed-out root to collect rainwater. There were shelves and nooks for the few possessions considered precious by the Lost Boys: piles of gold coins, interesting animal skeletons, shiny crystals, captivating burrs and seedpods. Also more strange detritus of the civilized world: a hinge, a pipe, a knob from a drawer, a spanner, and even a pocket watch.”
― Liz Braswell, Straight On Till Morning

“There must have been a billion leaves on the land; he waded in them, a dry river smelling of hot cloves and warm dust. And the other smells! There was a smell like a cut potato from all the land, raw and cold and white from having the moon on it most of the night. There was a smell like pickles from a bottle and a smell like parsley on the table at home. There was a faint yellow odour like mustard from a jar. There was a smell like carnations from the yard next door. He put down his hand and felt a weed rise up like a child brushing him. His fingers smelled of liquorice. He stood breathing, and the more he breathed the land in the more he was filled up with all the details of the land. He was not empty. There was more than enough here to fill him. There would always be more than enough.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Sticky everlasting

Meaning:My love will not leave you
Xerochrysum viscosum | New South Wales and Victoria

These paper-like flowers display hues of lemon, gold, and splotchy orange to fiery bronze.
They can be easily cut, dried, and preserved while retaining their stunning colors.”
― Holly Ringland, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

“Grace adored Amelia. The older woman was a close friend of her grandmother and mother, and a constant in Grace's life. She visited Amelia often. The inn was her second home.
As a child she'd always raced up the stairs and raided Amelia's bedroom closet, and Amelia had encouraged her unconventional behavior. Grace had loved dressing up in vintage clothing. Attempting to walk up in a pair of high button shoes. Amelia was the first to recognize Grace's love of costume. Her enjoyment of tea parties. She'd supported Grace's dream of opening her business, Charade, when Grace sought a career. From birthdays to holidays, the costume shop was popular and successful. Grace couldn't have been happier.
She admired Amelia now. Her long, braided hair was the same soft gray as her eyes. Years accumulated, but never seemed to touch her. She appeared youthful, ageless, in a sage-green tunic, belted over a paisley gauze skirt in shades of cranberry, green, and gold. Elaborate gold hoops hung at her ears, ones designed with silver beads and tiny gold bells. The thin metal chains on her three-tiered necklace sparkled with lavender rhinestones and reflective mirror discs. Bangles of charms looped her wrist. A thick, hammered-silver bracelet curved near her right elbow. A triple gold ring with three pearls arched from her index finger to her fourth. She sparkled.”
― Kate Angell, The Cottage on Pumpkin and Vine

“And what of all these spices? They're worth a pretty fortune." She waves a juddering arm across the table, at the tins and glass jars and earthenware pots. All at once a shaft of thin northern light swoops over them, jolting them into luminous life: bubbled glass jars of briny green peppercorns, salted capers, gleaming vanilla pods, rusted cinnamon sticks, all leaping and glinting. The sudden startling beauty of it, the palette of hues--ocher, terra-cotta, shades of earth and sand and grass---the pale trembling light. All thoughts of running a boardinghouse vanish.
I reach for a jar, lift its cork lid. The scent of bark, earth, roots, sky. And for a second I am somewhere else. "The mysterious scent of a secret kingdom," I murmur. The jar contains little pellets, brown, spherical, unexotic. How marvelous that something so plain can have such an enthralling perfume, I think.
"Oh, Miss Eliza. Always the poetess! It's only allspice." Cook gives a wan smile and gestures at the ceiling, where long bunches of herbs hang from a rack. Rosemary, tansy, sage, nettles, woodruff. "And what of these? All summer I was collecting these and they still ain't properly dry."
"May I lower it?" Not waiting for an answer I wind down the rack until the drying herbs are directly in front of me---a farmyard sweetness, a woody sappy scent, the smell of bruised apples and ripe earth and crushed ferns.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“Wait until the truffles hit the dining room---absolute sex," said Scott.
When the truffles arrived the paintings leaned off the walls toward them. They were the grand trumpets of winter, heralding excess against the poverty of the landscape. The black ones came first and the cooks packed them up in plastic quart containers with Arborio rice to keep them dry. They promised to make us risotto with the infused rice once the truffles were gone.
The white ones came later, looking like galactic fungus. They immediately went into the safe in Chef's office.
"In a safe? Really?"
"The trouble we take is in direct proportion to the trouble they take. They are impossible," Simone said under her breath while Chef went over the specials.
"They can't be that impossible if they are on restaurant menus all over town." I caught her eye. "I'm kidding."
"You can't cultivate them. The farmers used to take female pigs out into the countryside, lead them to the oaks, and pray. They don't use pigs anymore, they use well-behaved dogs. But they still walk and hope."
"What happened to the female pigs?"
Simone smiled. "The scent smells like testosterone to them. It drives them wild. They destroyed the land and the truffles because they would get so frenzied."
I waited at the service bar for drinks and Sasha came up beside me with a small wooden box. He opened it and there sat the blanched, malignant-looking tuber and a small razor designed specifically for it. The scent infiltrated every corner of the room, heady as opium smoke, drowsing us. Nicky picked up the truffle in his bare hand and delivered it to bar 11. He shaved it from high above the guest's plate.
Freshly tilled earth, fields of manure, the forest floor after a rain. I smelled berries, upheaval, mold, sheets sweated through a thousand times. Absolute sex.”
― Stephanie Danler, Sweetbitter

“Stuffed whole suckling pig is a feast-day specialty everywhere in Italy, although each region cooks it slightly differently. In Rome the piglet would be stuffed with its own fried organs; in Sardinia, with a mixture of lemons and minced meat. Here, evidently, the stuffing was made with bread crumbs and herbs. He could make out each individual component of the mixture: finocchio selvatico---wild fennel---garlic, rosemary, and olives, mingling with the smell of burning pork fat from the fire, which spit green flame briefly wherever the juices from the little pig, running down its trotters, dropped into it.”
― Anthony Capella, The Food of Love

“She knew what the Barbour aftershave would make her think of, and of course it did with its forest violets and cinnamon bark.”
― Maggie Alderson, The Scent of You

“Whipbirds cheered overhead, insects burred, the waterfall in Dead Man's Gully chipped and chattered. Fragments of light and color jittered as she ran, kaleidoscopic. The bush was alive: the trees spoke to one another in parched old voices; thousands of unseen eyes blinked from branches and fallen logs, and Vivien knew if she were to stop and press her ear to the hard ground she'd hear the earth calling to her, singing sounds from ancient times. She didn't stop, though; she was desperate to reach the creek that snaked through the gorge.”
― Kate Morton, The Secret Keeper

“I breathed in variations in wood smoke, smelled clams both fresh and dry, the scent of freshly gathered apples. Mud from my shoes and the smell of autumn leaves in the rain. The differences had been there all along, but I had been distracted, waiting for an entirely new world- a shift into an unknown realm. What was on those papers was far more mysterious.
Memory.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“I let Annabel show me how to do it, and together we planted the tomatoes. Once I'd done one or two, I discovered that I liked it, and that furthermore tomato plants smelled good. Not a pretty smell, but an interesting one, peppery and green. I could smell it on my hands, and in the sunny air.”
― Abbi Waxman, The Garden of Small Beginnings

“Whenever she could take the time from the English department, Celia would garden. At first she would resist, but then once she was down and dirty, perhaps because of the oxygen coming from the plants themselves, perhaps because she was dealing with the fecundity of the underworld and all its roots and thus the etymology of bloom, perhaps because it made her look forward with such radiant hope- she didn't know what it was, but once she started digging and planting she could not get herself to go back to the house until the light was gone. Most of the time she saw her garden as shaggy with wanting, weeds overgrown with their own delight. Occasionally, though, small corners of terrain or even single plants seemed to approach some ethereal ideal, as when one day a friend had left on her front porch an immense dahlia of impossible color, a sort of smoky rose gold, aureate.”
― Grace Dane Mazur, The Garden Party: A Novel

“Ooh, look." Birdie swerved out of line to a bushy plant full of purple flowers. She plucked a few delightedly. "Lilacs." She thrust them toward Leeda's face, and Leeda smiled, sniffing. Birdie could make something exciting out of anything on the orchard. She knew all the flowers, the species of birds, how much rainfall they could expect, where moss was likely to grow, which mushrooms were edible, and how long many of the trees had been in the ground. To walk across the property with Birdie was never just to walk through unnoticed space.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, Love and Peaches

“I walked in and closed my eyes as I ran my hands over the leaves of the tomato plants. I brought my fingers to my nose, breathing in the grassy, earthy freshness. It was no wonder the French cosmetic brand L'Occitane en Provence had found a way to capture this aroma in one of their hand creams.”
― Samantha Verant, Sophie Valroux's Paris Stars

“She feels a tickling sensation against her hand, different from the silky touch of soil. Looking down, she sees the pink glimmer of a worm---and then another, and another. As she watches, spellbound, other insects emerge from the earth, glowing like jewels in the summer sun. The copper glint of a beetle's shell. The pale, segmented bodies of larvae. There is a buzzing in her ears, and she's not sure if it's from the roar of her pulse or the bees that have begun to circle nearby.
They're getting closer. It's as if something---as if Kate---is drawing them. A beetle climbs her wrist, a worm brushes against the bare skin of her knee, a bee lands on her earlobe.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“The South is different from anywhere else on earth. Every time I returned, it seemed it was the beginning of my greatest story, like something was about to happen, the kind of something music was written about. There was a touch of magic in the air, and the Lowcountry was extra special. It must have something to do with the region's history, or maybe it was just the weather, but I felt more alive here. Even the sky was different. The sunrises were more jubilant, the stars brighter in the evenings, and the flowers more fragrant. It was easy to lose touch with nature in New York City, but just like a love that got away, you never knew how much you'd miss it until it was gone. In the evening when the sun would set, the horizon looked as if it were in flames. During a summer storm, giant blue-gray clouds pregnant with heat lightning rolled across the sky, making you run indoors filled with terror.”
― Victoria Benton Frank, My Magnolia Summer

“When I was a child, I associated my parents with individual flavors. It was the same way you might filter someone through a prism of color--- thinking of some people in blues, other people in reds--- but instead of color, the sensation I latched on to was flavor. My mother's flavors were always those of the desserts she made--- suave caramels and milk chocolates and the delicate, utterly feminine accents of crystallized violets or buttery almonds. But my father's flavors--- my father's flavors were something else altogether. They were subtle and elusive and melted on the tongue only to vanish before you could place them. Dark, adult flavors, and slightly bitter: veal carpaccio. silvery artichokes. And, most of all, mushrooms: chanterelles, chicken of the woods, and--- my father's favorite mushroom of all--- trumpets of death.”
― Charlotte Silver, Charlotte Au Chocolat: Memories of a Restaurant Girlhood

“She took a sip of wine and held it in her mouth, straining to identify the flavors. Cherry, she thought. Licorice. Thorns. She imagined a forest in late autumn, damp leaves on the ground, a blaze of color. She took another sip.
The man--- he must be Robert--- set a dish in front of her and she looked down, dismayed. What could it be? She'd never seen anything like it. It glistened up at her, a red-black sausage bursting from a shiny case. She inhaled the aroma: It was exotic, mysterious, almost intoxicating.
"Taste it," he urged.
It was pillow-soft, very rich, laced with spices. She identified the prickle of black pepper, the sweetness of onions. Parsley, she thought, nutmeg, and... was that chocolate? Bite by bite she chased the flavors, but they kept skipping away.
"Did you like it?" Robert was back.
She gestured at the empty plate. "It was wonderful. What kind of meat was in it?"
"Not meat, exactly." He watched her face as he said, "That was blood sausage.”
― Ruth Reichl, The Paris Novel

“She felt herself gliding over stone. Tiare and puakenikeni floated behind her, their fragrance replacing the cavern's musty air. Notes of sasalapa and citrus and moss displaced the heady mildew and the scale rot coalescing on the rocks.”
― Keala Kendall, How Far I'll Go

“In the other visions Te Fiti had sent her, wherever she went, the goddess had smelled of flowers and fresh green growth, perfuming the air with tiare, lehua honey, and heady moss.”
― Keala Kendall, How Far I'll Go

“From the trolley, he picked up a chocolate, rolled in cacao powder. 'These are ganache truffles,' he said. 'The easiest chocolates to make. Even a child can make them. Even Mahmed could, probably.'
I took one. It smelt of darkness infused with gold; a scent that both drew and repelled me.
'I don't really like dark chocolate,' I said.
'Just try one. I made them myself, from bean to bar. Nothing artificial.'
I bit a piece from the chocolate. It was bitter and powdery, but there were other flavors there, struggling to be released.
'Rest it on your tongue for a while. Eyes closed. Mouth half open.'
I did as he said. The bitter scent started to intensify. It's odd; I didn't quite like it, and yet it was evocative. I can taste charcoal, and nutmeg, and salt, and olive, and strong wild honey. It makes me think of incense, and woodsmoke on a frosty night, and the scent of fallen leaves in the rain, and the memory of that night in the church, the warmth of the confessional.
I thought I didn't like chocolate. In fact, I never knew it. Those little squares of chocolate I'd had as a child were nothing like this.
'I know. It's different,' he said. 'It's eighty per cent cacao. It might taste a little bitter to you, but that's the nature of cacao: the stuff you get in the shops here is really mostly sugar and palm oil and fat. But this is the soul of the cacao bean. This strength. This bitter potency. And in this form, it has a kick. It sharpens the mind. Gives energy.'
I put the rest of the chocolate aside. My mouth was furred with darkness.”
― Joanne Harris, Vianne

“I opened the jar. Guy's xocolatl smells of the ground after a short, hot fall of rain; of spices ground by hand in the dirt; of perfumes known to me only from stories. Here was vanilla, silphium, cardamom, ginger, and saffron. Here was cassia, star anise, fennel, mace and turmeric. But here too were stories of the great chocolate kings: Montezuma, Moctezuma, Itzcoatl, and Tizoc.”
― Joanne Harris, Vianne

“I'm standing so close I can smell him, something familiar in the warmth of his skin--- the faintest whiff of his cologne with traces of warm amber and woody, resinous cedar and an underlying herbaceous, peppery note of olive oil that seems to be a part of his essence. I lean closer, my nose brushing his skin, and he pulls back enough to look at me incredulously. "Are you sniffing me?"
I giggle, half-embarrassed at being caught out. "Sorry, you smell delicious," I tell him a little flirtatiously.
"Oh, do I?" He watches me, intrigued. "What do I smell like?"
"Like warm honey and the sticky sap of a cedar tree.”
― Rachel Linden, The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake

“He smells like amber and cedar overlaid by sun-warmed soil and almost-ripe olives. In a word, delicious.”
― Rachel Linden, The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake