Tembi Locke QUOTES

1 " I made other promises too, the kind of promises the living make to the dying when we have the sudden realization that we are all- in fact the dying. That life is fleeting capable of bending the other way at any moment. We reach hard for life. "

― Tembi Locke

2 " We had to begin at an ending and make a new beginning. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

3 " Cooking is about surrender. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

4 " I was witnessing another example of the way community functioned so tightly here, for better or for worse. Each of the women on this street will be called upon and expected to participate in the illness or death of the others. They held one another up, it was a custom as ancient and alive as the ruins of Sicily's Harrah temple. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

5 " Pain is part of life. That much I knew. If I could just teach her how to be resilient, how to love big, how to fear less. How to weather hurt, either at the hands of others or even the hurts she might unknowingly inflict on herself. I wanted her to know that love can come in many forms. That sometimes it can look like letting go, but it can also look like never letting go. That one day she might have to love someone in ways the world wasn’t ready for. That reaching for that kind of love would bring with it struggle, but in the end, it could be grander than her wildest imaginings. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

6 " He soothed the places I hadn't known needed soothing, seemed perfectly willing to embrace the parts of me that were wanton, unsettled, unfinished, and contradictory. Together we had engaged life as two forks eating off one plate. Ready to listen, to love, to look into the darkness and see a thin filament of the moon. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

7 " Yet nothing about dying was easy. Not for him nor for me. It was labor, as much labor as coming into this world. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

8 " All the strength I had gathered as a woman, mother, and lover wilted, instantly and completely. It was like being flung onto jagged rocks at low tide, belly up at high noon on the longest, hottest day of the longest year of your life. There seemed no bottom to my grief, no way out, just through. Through darkness, isolation, and the deprivation of his touch. "

― Tembi Locke

9 " He was kryptonite sprinkled on pizza, my personal weakness "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

10 " want you to know love someday. Another love. Your love is too beautiful not to share.” He said it with ease, not a trace of distress or ambivalence. As if it were the most natural thing for a husband to say to a wife. “I want you to live your life. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

11 " The connection you are creating here is like a flower. It requires soil and sun. things that, thanks to God, are given freely. But it is you, all of us, who has to water the flower to make it grow, Without water, all relations remain small. They can't open, and eventually die "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

12 " But I had learned that identity is prismatic, that belonging requires claiming. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

13 " The connection you are creating here is like a flower. It requires soil and sun, things that, thanks to God, are given freely. But it is you, all of us, who has to water the flower to make it grow. Without water, all relations remain small. They can’t open, and eventually they die. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

14 " I remember that the afternoon light was another passenger in the car, witnessing two lives in motion. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

15 " What if my own life was like a flower? Something I had to continually tend to and nurture. Sicily was the water and sun that fortified me to stand stronger in my life after loss. And maybe my leaving a rock at the cemetery, as an act of remembrance, had additional meaning. Maybe it was a symbol of the lasting permanence of Saro's love. His love, life, illness, and death had taught me so much but it was the undergirding of his love that was my salvation in loss. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

16 " Fennel is a delicious thing that can sprout up among the weeds along the road of life. As Saro had said, "It's there to make you know that you are alive. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

17 " Saro's love, his life and his loss had forged me, softening me to life and strengthening me in the broken places. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

18 " It requires gentle hands but also strong intentions. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

19 " The hot air was pregnant with jasmine and eucalyptus. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

20 " I have an endless thirst of love, the love of your body and soul. "

― Tembi Locke , From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home