the yak occidental

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life by Samantha Ellis When Helen flees her marriage, she has to make a woman of herself. She moves into Wildfell Hall , which is half in ruins, like her life. She swaps her hateful married surname for her mother’s maiden name, and the ostentatious clothes her husband liked in favour of the ‘plain, dark, sober’ clothes she likes. This is useful, too, because in these dark clothes she can disguise herself as a widow. She is killing off her husband in her mind. She is remembering who she was before she married him. Knowing this day would come, she’s secretly taught herself to paint. She finds a dealer in London, adopts another pseudonym and starts turning out commercial landscapes. She works out how to evade the village’s prying gossips. p. 9 [Virginia] Woolf said that after writing [ To the Lighthouse ] she finally stopped seeing her mother’s ghost. p.21 If you don’t like the rules of the world you liv...

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina by Zoraida Córdova. How could something that had never been his leave a hunger nothing else could fill? p.110 But he was also too beautiful to belong to anyone. Not truly. It was a funny thing that people warned of the dangers of pretty women, that there was power in beauty. But Orquidea thought beautiful men were even more dangerous. Men were already born with power. Why did they need more? p.187 When a man dismisses other women as nothing, he would eventually do the same to her. p.219 Some people were meant for great, lasting legacies. Others were meant for small moments of goodness, tiny but that rippled and grew in big, wide waves. Tatinelly may be ordinary, but she was not weak. p.250 There is nothing brighter than a wish. It comes from true hope. p.255 Silence is a language of its own in this family. A curse of our own making. p.272 Some people change over time, water wearing stones smooth. Others req...

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi. From Chabella, I've learnt how to fight anyone, man or woman, whilst sitting down completely still. It's all in the quality, not the quantity of tears; the soundless shudder as if the water comes from a deep place lined with rocks. p.10 Chabella and Papi have ways of looking at each other, ways of touching that are full of stunned caution. They trip over each other constantly, marvel each time [...] I grew up doubting that anyone would ever look at me in the same way. My doubt contains no great trauma; it's casual, the way people doubt they can jump off a bridge and fly. p.11 Books. I am attracted and repelled; books are conversations that are not addressed to me and I want to sneak up and listen but I also want to be invited in. If I was invited in the conversation would not be what it was. p.14 I told her about the shadow at night, and she talked about the Cloud of Unknowing, how when God i...

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson. "...she felt, and looked, as alien as a bird of paradise in a murmuration of starlings." p.30-31 "People are made differently - and how fortunate that they are; what a dull world it would be if we were all alike! One person can do one thing and another person can do something else. Together we shall be complete, invincible, perfect." p.283

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from Solar Storms by Linda Hogan. After that your absence sat at every table, occupied every room, walked through the doors of every house. p.18 She'd looked larger than she was, but her body seemed too light to contain a living soul. I thin i twas because her radiance was bigger than her body. p.32 Whatever it was, I was traveling backward in time toward myself at the same time I journeyed forward, like the new star astronomers found that traveled in two directions at once. p.64 She was, in the first moment of my seeing her, equal parts light and water. And she had the closed look people wear when they are too much alone. It seemed that I would interrupt nothing in her life. But even so, seeing her, I was witness to a kind of grace I was hard put to describe; I've seen it carried int eh stillness of deer and I've felt it in the changing power of seasons. It was only a glimpse - that's all I can say with words--that there was som...

Here are some tasty things I tried cooking in April as well as some other food-related revelations! It might be more appropriate to call this month's edition a 'local thrills' post for items I discovered and tried in the lower mainland of BC this past month! Paneer + Veg Snacks at Fruiticana Above: our haul from Goodway's and Fruiticana in Uptown New West I recently read the cookbook Ultimate Veg by Jamie Oliver and was inspired to try some recipes. A lot of his recipes while accessible and easy* to make were heavily inspired by culturally appropriated from South Asian and East Asian cuisines (as all other chefs and food bloggers seem to do, hell, if I'm cooking these items I am also guilty). *Actually very easy. Both my ex-wife and myself each took a crack at a couple recipes to great success. Needing things like cumin seeds, fenugreek seeds, tamarind paste, etc, we headed up to Galloway's in Uptown (now Goodway's) and Fruiticana also in Uptown New West,...