Jael McHenry Quotes

“In my life I've had good days and bad days. Miserable days. Painful days. And no matter how bad the bad ones get, there's a mercy in them. Every single one of them ends.”

— Jael McHenry

“There is no normal. There's only what's right for you and being honest.”

— Jael McHenry

“I tell myself I'm fine on my own, but am I? No friends to fall back on, no relationships, no support. Left to my own devices, I have no devices.”

— Jael McHenry

I want them to bite into a cookie, and think of me, and smile. Food is love. Food has a power. I knew it in my mind, but now I know it in my heart.

— Jael McHenry

“If you don't know how to deal with emotion, other people's feelings can hit you like a drug.”

— Jael McHenry

“Panic, panic, can't panic. Think of food. Think of sugar. I am a sugar cube in cold water. I won't dissolve. Precise edges. Made up of tiny, regular, secure parts. If the water were hotter I would worry, but it's cold. I stay together. Precise. Clean. Surrounded, but whole.”

— Jael McHenry

“There is something intriguing about knowing how things are going to turn out, but being constantly surprised about how they'll get there.”

— Jael McHenry

“Everybody struggles with this stuff, you know. With social discomfort and grief and fitting in. People with syndromes, people with disorders, people with diagnoses, and without. People who would be classified as neurotypical. Idiots and geniuses, maids and doctors. Nobody's got it all figured out.”

— Jael McHenry

We all have our own patterns, I guess ... And whether we like it or not, they persist.

— Jael McHenry

“Her hand is close to my arm. My options are limited. I can't run away. I can't handle this.
I lose myself in food.
The rich, wet texture of melting chocolate. The way good aged goat cheese coats your tongue. The silky feel of pasta dough when it's been pressed and rested just enough. How the scent of onions changes, over an hour, from raw to mellow, sharp to sweet, and all that even without tasting. The simplest magic: how heat transforms.”

— Jael McHenry

I find the title How to Be Good. Curious, I open it up. I'm disappointed to find it's fiction.

— Jael McHenry

“Contact.
When someone touches me wrong it isn't a feeling. It isn't hate or fear or pain. It is just blackness and a chant in me: get/out/get/out/get/out.”

— Jael McHenry

“Food has power. Nonna knew that. Ma did too. I know it now. And though it can't save me, it might help me, in some way. All I have besides food is grief.”

— Jael McHenry

“This is the way I've always been. I think of the answer long after the person asking the question has lost interest and walked away.”

— Jael McHenry

“But I can't force everything into the arrangement I'd like. I can't use denial to make everything simple.”

— Jael McHenry

“Heartbreak is stupid and impossible. Hearts don't break. Hearts squeeze, they wrench, they ache, they shrivel. Hearts pull apart in wet chunks like canned tomatoes.”

— Jael McHenry

“Innocence isn't a set of house keys. You don't just up and lose it one day. It's a process.”

— Jael McHenry

“I'm terrified of Elena's ghost, but at the same time, I feel strongly that it's the right thing to do. I can help, and I said I would, so I will. Besides, love is a powerful force. More powerful than reason. Even if that love, as strong as it is, isn't yours.”

— Jael McHenry

I let myself relax into the pattern of the recipe.

— Jael McHenry

All I have besides food is grief.

— Jael McHenry

“I preferred to think of myself as a cat. If I think of my behavior as cat behavior instead of people behavior, it pretty much always makes sense.”

— Jael McHenry

“His voice is muddy, that's what it is. Dark and brown and muddy. A note to it like coffee left too long on the burner. And unsweetened, bitter chocolate. But there's dirt in it too, deep, dark dirt, like the garden in October.”

— Jael McHenry

“This is home, it's the only place I want to be, but at the same time everything familiar feels strange. It's the same as it ever was except without the people who most belong here.”

— Jael McHenry

She's not quite making sense, but no one does all the time.

— Jael McHenry

“My world had turned upside down again and again, which should mean it's right side up now, but it isn't. Everything's different, everything's the same.”

— Jael McHenry

“One of my professors in college used to say As the wise man said, Do or do not, there is no try, but the advice columns generally say the opposite. If someone promises to try, and you're happy with that, don't push. It can backfire. You can get yourself in a lot of trouble asking for too much.”

— Jael McHenry

“I will take a new approach to death, because what is important about death is not the dead. It's the living. Those of us left behind.”

— Jael McHenry

“I love it," I say. "So I learned it." It's an explanation that leaves a lot out. But I learned a long time ago that people don't really want explanations.”

— Jael McHenry

“As strange as my life gets, it's just my life. I'm still in it. Whatever happens, I'm going to have to find a way to get by.”

— Jael McHenry

“It preoccupies me until it's time to leave. It seems such the right expression of grief. I am sad, so in whatever small way I can, I will tear myself apart. They've taken what's on the inside and made it visible. If I thought it wouldn't be inappropriate I'd do it myself.”

— Jael McHenry

“It's a French technique. Soups get screened, and sauces. Forced through a tamis or a chinois. Everything that comes out is smooth and all the rough parts get left behind, thrown away. I don't want to be screened.”

— Jael McHenry

“Difficult, but not impossible. I am not impossible.”

— Jael McHenry

“Alone doesn't just mean without people. It can mean without anything else. And maybe, even without putting a word on me, she's found a way to take away things I thought were mine. If this is the start I have no way to know when it will stop.”

— Jael McHenry

He has a key and could come back in, but I doubt he will. He doesn't want to be here any more than I want him here. We've failed. I've failed. I made a promise that I couldn't, didn't, keep.

— Jael McHenry

The scene is most beautiful without people in it. People just screw things up. Forget the whole thing, the world, all the living people, I tell myself, and it has a ring of truth to it. The dead are better, aren't they? The dead don't betray or harm. They've already done all they can do. I can't figure out what people mean or who they are or whether they can be trusted, so, forget them. Don't even try anymore. For now at least, forget the living.

— Jael McHenry