Ashlee Stanley

“These bones I carry were borrowed from women much stronger than I.
Know that when you need them, you can borrow mine.”
― Nichole McElhaney, A Sisterhood of Smoke and Ash

“The peach gown she'd chosen was the color of the sunrise, the rippling watered silk seeming to subtly change from rose to pink to nearly orange in different lights. She'd fallen in love with it at once.”
― Elizabeth Hoyt, Duke of Desire

“I knew that sunny citrus helped put things in focus, sharpened the memory, just like a squeeze of lemon juice could sharpen and clarify the taste of sweet fruit. I was also well aware that too much citrus could indicate a corrosive anger. My first wedding at Rainbow Cake had taught me that. But this was a gentle, subdued citrus, like the taste of a Meyer lemon.
Spice usually indicated grief, a loss that lingered for a long time, just like the pungent flavor of the spice itself, whether it was nutmeg or allspice or star anise. The more pronounced the flavor, the more recent the loss and the stronger the emotion. So there was some kind of loss or remembrance involved here. Yet there was also a comfort in the remembering, knowing that people had gone before you. That they waited for you on the other side.”
― Judith Fertig, The Memory of Lemon

“It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case if that I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear