Cafe Quotes

“It was the same Dimitri from long ago, the fierce one who was willing to risk his life for what was right. I almost wished he'd go back to being annoying, distant Dimitri, the one who told me to stay away. Seeing him now brought back too many memories -not to mention the attraction I thought I'd smashed. Now, with that passion all over him, he seemed sexier than ever. He'd worn that same intensity when we'd fought together. Even when we'd had sex. This was the way Dimitri was supposed to be: powerful and in charge.”
― Richelle Mead, Spirit Bound

“Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
These trees are yours because you once looked at them.
These streets are yours because you once traversed them.
These coffee shops and bookshops, these cafés and bars, their sole owner is you.
They gave themselves so willingly, surrendering to your perfume.
You sang with the birds and they stopped to listen to you.
You smiled at the sheepish stars and they fell into your hair.
The sun and moon, the sea and mountain, they have all left from heartbreak.
Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
You once spoke to Him, and then God became yours.
He sits with us in darkness now
to plot how to make you ours.” K.K.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“She's in the Catskill," Shopie began, but Scathach reached over and pinched her hand. "Ouch!"
I just wanted to distract you," Scathach explained. "Don't even think about Black Annis. There are some names that should never be spoken aloud."
That like saying don't think of elephants, Josh said, "and then all you can think about is elephants."
Then let me give you something else to think about," Scathach said softly. "There are two police officers in the window staring at us. Don't look," she added urgently.
Too late. Josh turned to look and whatever crossed his face--shock, horror, guilt or fear--bought both officers racing into the cafe, one pulling his automatic from its holster, the other speaking urgently into his radio as he drew his baton.”
― Michael Scott

“The bistro was his secret weapon in tracking down murderers. Not just in Three Pines, but in every town and village in Quebec. First he found a comfortable café or brasserie, or bistro, then he found the murderer. Because Armand Gamache knew something many of his colleagues never figured out. Murder was deeply human, the murdered and the murderer. To describe the murderer as a monstrosity, a grotesque, was to give him an unfair advantage. No. Murderers were human, and at the root of each murder was an emotion. Warped, no doubt. Twisted and ugly. But an emotion. And one so powerful it had driven a man to make a ghost.

Gamache's job was to collect the evidence, but also to collect the emotions. And the only way he knew to do that was do get to know the people. To watch and listen. To pay attention, and the best way to do that was in a deceptively casual way in a deceptively casual setting.

Like the bistro.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“وقد ظهرت المقاهي في التاريخ لأن الناس يريدون أن يقولوا ... أي شئ لأي أحد في أي وقت وفي ذك راحة لأنفسهم”
― أنيس منصور, عاشوا في حياتي

“There was something quite beautiful about finding such a profound connection with an absolute stranger. In a city as densely populated as New York, the ratio of oddballs and jerks often seems to outnumber the sane ones. But tonight, I had found that rare gem.”
― Justine Castellon, Gnight, Sara / 'Night, Heck

“Frank treated customers with the contempt Rosy had only seen before at airport passport control. Even then, she’d never heard an immigration official refer to anybody as baldy.
“Hey, baldy,” Frank had said and whistled to call a customer back as though he were down in the paddock with an unruly herd. “You forgot your juice.”
Frank held up the bottle of Tropicana orange juice. And when… baldy came back, Frank slapped the bottle into his hand as though passing him the baton in a relay race, then waved the man aside—“Go!”—and pointed at the next customer.
“What do you want?” Frank said. “Cheese? Again? That’s three cheese you’ll have had in a row. Are you eating right?”
The customer stammered.
“Eh-but-eh-but-eh-but,” Frank mimicked. “Never mind. But think up a different filling next time. And not cheese and tomato.” He shook his head and made up the roll.”
― R.G. Manse, Screw Friendship

“WELCOME to the Karma Cafe. There are no menus you get served what you deserve...”
― Nitya Prakash

“A small café, that's love.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“It's worth getting out of bed some mornings. And it's a pleasure, especially if the pale winter sun is out and shining, to delight with your lover in the urban gift of your favorite café. Fresh coffee, steaming croissants, and the Sunday papers. Ah! All the way to ours, Alice and I talked about love and how many people don't get any while others get a lot, and how that unfairness probably accounts for the federal deficit and crooked contracting practices, and so on.”
― Andrei Codrescu, New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings from the City

“We each took a cup as we passed and drank the sweet chilled beverage- it was refreshing and tasted like ginger ale with a swirl of summer peaches. Then Peaseblossom waved us through the open door.
"Wow," said Henry.
We stepped into an enchanted culinary forest. The walls had been painted to look like a thicket of trees, and the ceiling resembled the summer sky in the woods, complete with overhanging branches. There were topiaries and baskets overflowing with wildflowers. The tables were grouped to one side, still draped in their shimmering coverings. Dreamy music floated through the air, and piney, herby scents wafted on gentle currents. Butterflies flitted around and landed on people's heads and shoulders. And everywhere we looked, there were trays of baked goods- most of them, I realized, straight from the pages of Puffy Fay's cookbook. The pastry case and the counter near it were hidden behind curtains that looked like a wall of evergreens.”
― Rajani LaRocca, Midsummer's Mayhem

“En su momento pensó que no podría vivir sin café, pero resulta que en realidad lo que quiere entre las manos es el tazón caliente; eso es lo que ayuda a pensar o a hacer lo que haga durante la sucesión de las horas, o de los días.”
― Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness: Stories

“Perhaps he was only a homosexual, but I didn't want to take any chances.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Café olvidado a temperatura ambiente,
Recuerdos verdes, helados por la noche,
Un último cigarrillo como postre.
Los frutos de mi anhedonia.”
― Sebastian Crugley, Oceanos de Cemento

“It is a fact of human nature that we derive pleasure from watching others engage in pleasurable acts. This explains the popularity of two enterprises: pornography and cafés. Americans excel at the former, but Europeans do a better job at the latter. The food and the coffee are almost beside the point. I once heard of a café in Tel Aviv that dispensed with food and drink all together; it served customers empty plates and cups yet charged real money. Cafés are theaters where the customer is both audience and performer.”
― Eric Weiner

“But Tokyo offers cat cafes, a commercial solution to the problem of wanting to commune with cats but being unwilling or unable to have one at home.
Iris's favorite cat cafe is Nekorobi, in the Ikebukuro neighborhood. When I first heard about cat cafes, I imagined something like Starbucks with a cat on your lap. Wrong. Nekorobi is what you'd get if you asked a cat-obsessed kid to draw a floorplan of her dream apartment: a bathroom, a drink vending machine(free with admission), a snack table, video games, and about ten cats and their attendant toys, scratching posts, beds, and climbing structures. Oh, and the furniture is in the beanbag chic style.
Considering all the attention they get, the cats were amazingly friendly, and I'd never seen such a variety of cat breeds up close. (Nor have I ever spent more than ten seconds thinking about cat breeds.) My favorite was a light gray cat with soft fur, which curled up and slept near me while I sat on a beanbag and read a book. Iris made the rounds, drinking a bottomless cup of the vitamin-fortified soda C.C. Lemon and making sure to give equal time to each cat, including the flat-faced feline that looked like it had beaned with a skillet in old-timey cartoon fashion.”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“So, after a cash injection from her mega-wealthy dad, Sam made the move down from Chelsea to Mulberry-On-Sea and now reigns supreme over her gorgeous café. It has a honey-hued interior and reclaimed train seats upholstered in crimson velvet, sectioned into booths, so you feel as though you're actually in a real vintage steam train, complete with golden glow lighting from frilly-shaded table lamps. It's very nostalgic in an Orient Express kind of way. And the food is to die for- salted caramel cupcakes, rainbow salads, delicious artisan breads and the most fabulous afternoon cream teas you can possibly imagine. Homemade scones piled high with strawberry jam and gooey clotted cream, surrounded by delicate finger sandwiches crammed with every filling imaginable.”
― Alexandra Brown, Cupcake's at Carrington's

“I have just taught Soli to make borscht! Yesterday I bought beets with big, glossy leaves still caked with wet soil. Naneh washed them in the tub until her arthritis flared, but she's promised to make dolmas with the leaves. After we closed Soli tucked the beets under coals and roasted them all night. When I woke up I smelled caramel and winter and smoke. It made me so hungry, I peeled a hot, slippery one for breakfast and licked the ashes and charred juices off with my burnt fingertips. Noor, bruised from betrayal, remembered borscht, remembered stirring sour cream into the broth and making pink paisley shapes with the tip of her spoon, always surprised by the first tangy taste, each time anticipating sweetness. Her mother had called it a soup for the brokenhearted.
She marveled at her father's enthusiasm for borscht, when for thirty years each day had been a struggle. Another man would've untied his apron long ago and left the country for a softer life, but not Zod. He would not walk away from his courtyard with its turquoise fountain and rose-colored tables beneath the shade of giant mulberry trees, nor the gazebo, now overgrown with jasmine, where an orchestra once played and his wife sang into the summer nights.”
― Donia Bijan, The Last Days of Café Leila

“I see a lavish procession of frothy strawberry mousses, strips of smoked eel, bundles of mixed seaweed and mushrooms, exquisite spiced biscuits and specialist honeys. The photographs show pyramids, three-arched bridges, palaces with several floors and balconies and terraces- works of art for the delectation of the mouth. I admire a Golden Gate Bridge made of nougatine, an Eiffel Tower of profiteroles and a Taj Mahal in meringue.”
― Agnès Desarthe, Chez Moi: A Novel

“Stepping outside, all finished, gold porchlight kissed my forehead. The animated nighttime island was a concrete jungle wild with promise, and around any cobblestone corner my big break might exist, disguised as a simple café, waiting for me to open the door.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“We were drinking coffee. I was sitting beside her in the shade of the cafe, watching the smoke from her lips drift up into the atmosphere above. And the curve in her lips paused time!”
― Avijeet Das

“They took the elevator up to the eighth floor. Charbonnel et Walker Chocolate Café was tucked between Ladies' Shoes and the Home and Gifts Department. Bathed in pale pink paint and lit by crystal chandeliers, the enchanted corner was dominated by a counter featuring a conveyor belt that transported plates of croissants, brownies, scones, muffins, and every imaginable truffle under glass domes. Dark and milk chocolate, strawberry, lemon, pink champagne, mint, cappuccino, and buzz fizz with its distinctive orange center. Sparkling glass cabinets temptingly displayed hundreds of the treats lined up in precise rows. They could be consumed on the premises or purchased to take away. A gold seal on the candy boxes signaled that the Queen of England was a fan.”
― Mary Jane Clark, To Have and to Kill

“You haven't until you've come in and tried one of our coffees.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“coffee: (n.) caffeinated beverage God gave us to drink in the morning so we might resist the urge to crawl immediately back in bed.”
― Sol Luckman, The Angel's Dictionary

“Milkshakes gave me a taste for life.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Milkshakes bring friends together.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Across the street from the bed-and-breakfast, I open a small café where residents can sip cocoa lattes, eat raspberry tarts baked in Valentine's Town, and savor orange whipped toffees that Helgamine and Zeldaborn complain get stuck in their few remaining teeth--yet they keep coming back for more. Wolfman and Behemoth sit together every afternoon sharing a pot of black rose tea, delicately holding their cups between clawed and too-large fingertips, nibbling on coconut macaroons. I even sell my sleeping tonic at the café--in a much milder dose than what I brew for the Sandman, who still stops by for a refill now and then--in scents of lavender and chamomile, herbs harvested from Dream Town.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas

“Le café (...) est un lieu de rendez-vous, c'est un espace ouvert, extérieur. C'est un endroit où l'on peut aussi venir seul, pour travailler, lire, mais où cette solitude est souvent interrompue par le passage de connaissances. S'installer au café témoigne d'une sorte de disposition à la rencontre”
― Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, 3: Une aspiration au dehors

“Moist cake, fresh blueberries, and melt-in-the-mouth frosting. "Best ever." He understood her slow savoring and the licking of her lips.
"I could eat blueberry butter cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner," she confessed. She tapped her fork on the plate, encouraging him. "There's plenty; have a second bite."
He shook his head; she was his indulgence. All happy, uninhibited, and turned on by cake. "I enjoy dessert now and again," he conceded. "But I'm more of a meat-and-potato guy."
"There's steak and eggs on our breakfast menu," she said. "Gram makes amazing home fries. Sliced potatoes, chopped onions, and sweet bell peppers cooked in bacon fat. Don't get me started on her buttermilk biscuits.”
― Kate Angell, The Café Between Pumpkin and Pie

“KENDERALL TAKES US UP TO Fred's to "replenish."
It's a café on the ninth floor of Barneys, it's very expensive and glamorous, and it confuses me immensely because Fred has an apostrophe but Barney doesn't so I'm not entirely sure what belongs to whom.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect