Anouska Hempel Quotes

“I always like to read something romantic about the place I'm visiting.”

“Unless a design is infused with a personality - and by that, I mean mine or someone else who really understands what design is all about - it will never, ever have any mystery.”

“Design, refine and repeat, and keep learning all the way along. It sounds bland and pedestrian, but in fact, it's the reverse.”

“I'm not an interior decorator; I'm a designer, and that includes the architecture. The package must be strong and controlled, the rooms aligned, and the windows positioned to make sense with the furniture. Fluff it up, and you've got big trouble.”

“I get up in the morning, look around, arrange and rearrange things, and imagine how I might like them to look. Why doesn't everybody?”

“Gnats drifted on the same warm summer breeze that saw colorful paper lanterns swaying on their strings. Lily of the valley filled jam jars at each table, but sweet peas had won out in the battle to fragrance the evening air.”

“If there was a dress that could make a fashion-appreciative girl out of me, this was it. The colors shimmered from gunmetal to pewter, reminding me of frost on the hedgerows where the light caught. The V of the neck decoratively dipped towards what Martha told me was an empty line, where organza, the color of stormy skies, fell all the way to the floor.”

“Ryan was a nose away from the tallest cake on display, a six-foot-high chocolate masterpiece Jesse and I had created for this year's fairs. Detailed water nymph's interspersed with insects and toadstools, all sculpted by hand in rich dark chocolate.”

“What do you know of the Knights?” he asked. Fin shrugged. “I thought knights were only in children’s stories until a few days ago.” Jeannot smiled. “A man could do worse than to live in the stories of a child. There is, perhaps, no better remembrance.” “Until the child grows up and finds out the stories aren’t true. You might be knights, but I don’t see any shining armor,” Fin said. Jeannot stopped near the gate of the auberge and faced her. “Each time a story is told, the details and accuracies and facts are winnowed away until all that remains is the heart of the tale. If there is truth at the heart of it, a tale may live forever. As a knight, there is no dragon to slay, no maiden to rescue, and no miraculous grail to uncover. A knight seeks the truth beneath these things, seeks the heart. We call this the corso. The path set before us. The race we must run.”

“Even a hedge knight has his honor.”