Nicole Mones Quotes & Sayings

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

An inch of gold can't buy an inch of time — Nicole Mones

They say that the cuisines of different Chinese provinces arose originally to serve different kinds of constituencies. Beijing was the cuisine of officials. In Shanghai, that was the cuisine of wealthy merchants and industrialists. In Szechwan, the food of the common people. Many great Szechwan dishes originated in street stalls. — Nicole Mones

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

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

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

What was more brutal than loss of hope? — Nicole Mones

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

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

I don't believe fundamentally in anything but the awakening of spirit, hope, and freedom. — Nicole Mones

He forgot all that was strange about her face when she smiled. Because then, pleasure just burst out from somewhere inside her. He liked that. It was uncontrolled. — Nicole Mones

Full of rage at a world which seemed all wrong to her and dreaming about someplace where she would belong, really belong. — Nicole Mones

But in the end he didn't love her enough to fight for her. — Nicole Mones

Both the nationalists and the communists disapproved of jazz and feared it. They thought it would weaken people's resolve to fight off the invasion. And most Americans know, China did ban all Western music for about 30 years, starting in 1949. This is where it started. — Nicole Mones

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

They connected on every level - mental, philosophical, emotional. But she couldn't have him, not all of him. — Nicole Mones

Food is the main engine that drives connectedness, relationship in Chinese society. — Nicole Mones

I don't hope," he answered, eyes on her. "I never hope. I just live in gratitude for what comes. — Nicole Mones

Breaking some respected boundaries means a torrent of new life. — Nicole Mones

We are fish swimming in a cooking pot — Nicole Mones

She, too, could become someone else. Eventually. Or she'd told herself all these years. — Nicole Mones

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

She pictured herself in a world without him, a world where she had only her own heart and mind to follow. A world open and blank with possibility; terrifying, almost. — Nicole Mones

In the 1970s and early '80s, Shanghai was quiet, cautious, a ghost of a once-great city - and yet physically, little was changed from its glittering heyday. When visiting, I enjoyed reading books on local history and used my time off to scope out the former haunts of gangsters and jazzmen. — Nicole Mones

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

Chinese food tries to engage the mind, not just the palate. To provoke the intellect. — Nicole Mones

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

You can't portray wartime Shanghai without writing about the Holocaust - about 25,000 Jews survived the Nazi death machine by taking refuge there. — Nicole Mones

Even though Japan and Germany were not formal allies at the time that Japan conquered Shanghai in 1937, still, Frenchtown was an area that Japan could take complete control of - and they did. And it was the locus of nightlife. — Nicole Mones

In my own life I studied music, not creative writing; I see a novel as music - an opening as an overture, themes and subplots as lines in a fugue. The chance to write a novel about a musician boxed in by all kinds of limitations but who plays out his ultimate struggle for freedom at the piano was irresistible. — Nicole Mones

Grief is a killer, isn't it?" he said. "Brings you right up to the truth. — Nicole Mones

Great food needed more than chefs; it needed gourmet diners. — Nicole Mones

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

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

You know how someone - something - surprises you. You wake up a little bit. That's done through Chinese cuisine - for example, through dishes of artifice. That's a whole sub-tradition in Chinese cuisine. To create a dish that comes to the table looking like one thing but actually is something else. — Nicole Mones

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

A door to an alternate self. This self was another Alice, not the childhood Alice: capable, free in the world, independent. — Nicole Mones