Quotes from Jeffrey Stepakoff

Whether we like it or not, we all come from someplace. And at some point in our lives, we have to make peace with that place.

A good fragrance is really a powerful cocktail of memories and emotion.

An apple tree is just like a person. In order to thrive, it needs companionship that's similar to it in some ways, but quite different than others.

A soaking rain had just stopped, and his boots sank deeply into the nitrogen-rich soil. The entire orchard smelled of wet wood and ripe fruit. It was a strong dizzying scent, and nothing else was quite like it- though his grandfather used to say this smell was identical to the limestone caves of Lower Normandy: cold and dripping, where cask upon cask of Calvados, the great fortified apple brandy of Norman lords, slept away the years.

I'm just a girl Jake" "I think you're that, and much, much more." Another long moment. Lily found herself returning his smile, finding her own sense of knowing. And suddenly she felt at ease, a sense of mysterious calm.

She loved watching him eat, as she always loved watching someone enjoy her flavors. But this was also very different. She could hear him breathing and making involuntarily sounds of enjoyment while he chewed and swallowed. It was primal, and she was intrigued, watching him lose control and give in to that.

Long and slender in her tailored pencil skirt, Grace Lyndon stood on her executive desk, balancing in her fine designer heels, reaching for a burned-out

A moment in the sky, forever in the heart.

The world was such a different place, but there were the same stars, the same kinds of yearnings beneath them.

His clean skin had a sweet earthy scent, like ripe roasted breadfruit, or warm oiled saddle leather. It was an evocative fragrance that rambled through her blood, at once comforting and licentious.

On top of a goodly helping of baby lettuce, Grace placed a neat rectangle of grilled salmon, and then precisely five cherry tomatoes, five broccoli florets, five baby carrots, five cucumber slices, and five slices of green bell pepper. She liked the balance and symmetry of the meal she had made. Still, she liked almonds more, and daring to disrupt the balance of the universe, she threw in a spoonful of an unknown number.

When I was a kid," he said, "I used to run around this place barefoot, until I stepped on one of those pop-tops. I have a semicircular scar, big one, on my heel." A hand on the doorframe for support, he lifted up one of his feet and pointed. She stopped, looked, seeing the little scar that was virtually identical to the one on 'her' foot.

Look, Herb, I could keep you all here all afternoon, sniffin' and slurpin' pink Peruvian peppercorns and criollo cacao, and cinnamon and cascarilla and coriander, and caraway and carrot seed and so much climbing ylang-ylang you couldn't tell a cup of tea from a cup of turpentine.

Then she remembered. The apple. Reaching over to her bag on the passenger seat with her right hand, left hand on the wheel, Grace grasped the apple like a baseball and brought it to her face. Again, she held it under her nose and took in its scent. Wow. Even with the wind blowing around her, the fragrance was full and lush and sweet- though not overtly, like so many of today's commercially bred grocery store apples, but deep, dark, sugared, as the night in a Caribbean cane field.

I dug wild mushrooms out of a jungle in Gabon, plucked 'Vanilla pompona' orchids from Madagascar treetops, tracked down Sichuan hot pot pepper in a seedy back alley in Shanghai. I've sniffed test tubes filled with scents that are not of this earth. But I have never quite been struck the way I have been struck by your apple.

Turning a corner, she encountered the smell of fried chicken. One of the test kitchens had been working on a new product for a fast-food client, developing a proprietary sauce for a new kind of sandwich to compete with one KFC had recently brought to market. It had no bun, but rather two pressed chicken segments deep-fried in a shortening of processed lard and beef fat, wrapped around thick shingled bacon and a slice of provolone, and smothered in this hydrogenated oil-based sauce.

You ask a lot of questions for a girl in a tree." "Asking questions is a sign of intelligence." "I've heard that. Do your parents know you're out here?" "You ask a lot of questions for a lady who looks like she's been up all night." "Intelligence," Grace said playfully. "Barefoot in the mud? I dunno. You don't 'look' so smart.

There are no ordinary lives.

Rain pounded on the Packard, reverberating through the car and into her bones. The wipers going full speed, banging on the steel frame of the windshield like a metronome out of control, she still could not see more than a few feet in front of her.

Inside the car, Lily stared at the tree right in front of her as bucketfuls of wet Georgia red clay, the color of blood, just sprayed up from her car, dripped slowly down the trunk.

The kitchen smelled amazing. Turkey-apple sausage sizzled in a blackened iron skillet on the sturdy old eight-burner gas range. Thick slices of bread toasted in a shiny vintage Toastmaster. Hair tied back, sleeves rolled up on her blouse, apron around her waist, Grace tossed a handful of pecans into the skillet and let them brown with the sausage while she flipped a cheddar-filled omelet in another pan. The heady aroma of freshly ground black dark-roast coffee filled the kitchen.

And just stared, unmoved, as though watching a world in which she was no longer an inhabitant.

Lily lay back in Jake's arms looking at the timbered roof overhead, planks and beams smooth and worn, antiqued by a century of summers.

Both possessing remarkably rich southern drawls, words loitered on their tongues like drunken drifters when they spoke.