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1 " There was no experience, I thought, quite as wonderful as being an American in Paris. "
― Ann Mah , Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris
2 " Now, I was unemployed in Beijing, and my former ambition seemed like the pollution that smudged the sky, a great green cloud composed of a billion different particles of fear and uncertainty. Without a career I hardly knew who I was anymore. "
3 " I had spent enough time in France to know that the words 'chez moi' meant something a thousand times more profound than one's current home. 'Chez moi' was the place your parents came from, or maybe even the region of your parents' parents. The food you ate at Christmas, your favorite kind of cheese, your best childhood memories of summer vacation -- all of these derived from 'chez moi.' And even if you had never lived there, 'chez moi' was knitted into your identity; it colored the way you viewed the world and the way the world viewed you. "
― Ann Mah , The Lost Vintage
4 " Instead, we have simply readjusted our limits of tolerance. "
5 " I’ve always felt there are two states of existence: being in Paris and being out of it. "
6 " Insomnia. It was like a foreign movie I never wanted to see, filled with dark images that ran on an incessant loop through my exhausted brain. "
7 " In France dining is meant to be a special, pleasurable part of the day; food offers not only fuel for the body but also a connection—between the people who have joined you at the table, between the generations who have shared a recipe, between the terroir (the earth) and the culture and cuisine that have sprung from it. Separate from cooking, the very act of eating is in itself an art to master. "
8 " this is the only place I’ve ever lived. Know what I mean? How will I ever grow up if I don’t leave? "
9 " At this point, my “chez moi” was more a space within myself—the dreams and ambitions that I carried with me—rather than any tangible place. "
10 " Sometimes, I thought, living in Paris was like living in a museum—beautiful and poignant and untouched by time. "
11 " party—Claire only had one attendant, her pale roommate from law school, Kate Addison, who took one look at the whole roast suckling pig and spent the rest of the day slugging Johnnie Walker Red in a deep state of culture shock—but "
― Ann Mah , Kitchen Chinese: A Novel About Food, Family, and Finding Yourself
12 " In 1944 the Confrérie established the Château du Clos de Vougeot as their headquarters, restoring it and in fact improving upon its former austerity, creating luxurious banquet rooms where monks had once lived in spartan simplicity. (In the monks’ former dining room, re-created as part of the château’s museum, long wooden tables, benches, and a pulpit hinted at their austere lifestyle; one brother would read passages from the Bible as the others ate gruel in enforced silence.) "
13 " wonder if this war could actually be a form of alchemy—changing us, testing us, until each of us has revealed the truest part of our souls. "
14 " Liberté. The word could have so many different interpretations: Freedom from oppression. Freedom from the past. Freedom to stand up to injustice. To remain and fight for one’s values was surely as important a legacy as the terroir itself. "
15 " They say there are as many recipes for crêpes in Bretagne as there are people who make them, "
16 " Of course, it still sailed next to me, that parallel life—it would always sail next to me—as full of joy and challenge as the one I was living. I thought of it sometimes, pale and chilled—lit by a satellite moon, not the sun of reality—a ghostly ship charting a route to what might have been, while I remained on the course of what was. * "
17 " But though the pursuit of pleasure was encouraged, ambition was considered unseemly. Hard work had to be hidden, and success needed to appear effortless, even accidental. It "
