Incense and Sensibility Quotes

“You're already breaking your promise. A promise isn't what you say. It's what you do.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“You just have to trust yourself, beta. Focus on what matters to you and don’t let it get all mixed up with what others want.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Sometimes all your principles become meaningless in the wake of the sheer force of your feelings.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“It's just that sometimes people who appear strongest on the outside can hurt the hardest on the inside.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“How were you naive enough to think you and Yash had a chance?" Naina said.
"Because truth has to..."
"... count for something," Yash and India said together.
India spun toward him. And there it was, the endless peace of her gaze. Breath whooshed out of him, weight lifted off his shoulders.
"Because love has to count for something." He took a step closer, and her body sagged, mirroring all the relief he was feeling. "I breathe differently when she's around. I feel... I feel alive in ways I never have.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“I get to help you too. You need to accept help too. Not just give it. You tell me I need to control everything, but by never letting yourself need anyone, you're controlling everything too.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“What about the election?"
"What about it? I did my part, now I just have to trust the universe to do the rest." He wiped her tears.
"What if you lose?" she asked.
He tucked her hair behind her ear. "I've already won. Because I have you.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Energy was a healer and touch brought awareness to the part of your body that needed attention, and that had its own power.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“I believe that to truly heal you have to treat the whole individual. Yoga is one part of that."
"What's the other part?"
"Understanding yourself as a human being."
"You mean therapy."
"I mean digging into your emotions. Understanding yourself, who you are, how you function. Taking yourself apart like a machine and finding the rusty parts and oiling them.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Even the enormity of what had happened in this gazebo with India had been no match for his focus, because twenty-four hours did not define you.
An hour with her just redefined you.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“It's okay to do what feels easy and to trust that the universe won't punish you for it.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“You think fighting for things is what makes you you, but that's only half of it. You can't make decisions that center only on your wants. You care about what everyone else wants. You care. That's what sets you apart. That's what makes you a public servant and not a politician. You want to change things for everyone. A person who puts his own gains ahead of others can never do that.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Did you want me to be grateful that you're leaving?"
Among other things. At first India didn't say it. Then she did.
Naina looked taken aback. "Like what? Having another woman steal what's mine?"
India stopped and turned to her. Was she for real?
Don't engage with her.
But the look on Naina's face was too superior, too entitled. "If indeed one of us is stealing what's not theirs, it isn't me.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Time stilled. The constant need to spin stilled. Yash watched the scene before him, the power of what he was witnessing overtook his body. Every bit of helplessness that had been dragging at him stilled.
He'd been obsessively practicing the pranayama India had taught him every morning and meditating through the surya namaskar. He'd become addicted to the escape of centering his mind and body as one. That's how this felt, this letting go, this being fully immersed in something out of his control.
It felt good.
Like someone had sliced the ropes tying him up with the sharpest blade. One flick, the cut clean and quick. He was unbound.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“He felt like he was here to fight for everyone, but for himself most of all, because he needed to live in a world that was more equitable. A world that took care of the sick and protected the weak while it also gave free rein to those who innovated and made the world richer, more connected, more plentiful for everyone. Those things were not separate, not mutually exclusive, and they needed to be tied back together in the consciousness of our nation, and the world, not just California. But like in everything else, California was as good a place as any to start something.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Yash had carried a lantern when he'd brought her here the night before Nisha's wedding. A camping lantern with the kind of white light that mirrored the moonlight and picked out the glitter in their clothes. It had turned the sequins on her ghaghra into a million stars that merged seamlessly with the silver threaded through his kurta, the endless universe of possibility inside them reflected around them.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Our bodies being as magical as they are, the tissue wraps up the bullet and protects the body from it. I once had a student who fainted during a session. Turns out he'd been shot ten years ago and the bullet they'd left in his elbow had mushroomed into a lead-leaking bomb." She poked a finger into Yash's elbow and made an explosion with her hand. "Boom! It was flooding lead into his blood like a pump."
Yash's eyes shone. "Wow!" The smile he threw India lit a spark inside her. "What happened?"
Tara grinned, relishing the gore as much as her captivated audience. "They dug the bullet out of him. It was five times its original size. Then they pumped him full of drugs to absorb the lead. No permanent damage. Simen ended up going to nursing school.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Yash and I aren't exactly going for easy. We want to do hard things. World-changing things. It's not something a yoga instructor would understand. If you don't leave him alone, your selfishness is going to ruin everything."
"My selfishness is going to ruin everything for you. That's a really selfless sentiment."
That stopped Naina. Suddenly the superiority in her gaze turned to something else. Fear? For the first time she looked like she saw India as more than just a yoga instructor.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Yash's happiness is in being governor of California. Then moving on to even bigger things. I'm the one who will get him there. You're the one who will get in his way."
Every time India thought she could walk away without answering, the woman said something that made it impossible. "And you don't care how you get there? You don't care that you're holding him to ransom when all he was doing was helping you? You don't care that you've turned him into a crutch?"
Naina paled at that. India had hit a nerve. But every aha moment fought you. That's what made the journey so hard.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“What exactly is Arabia? Isn’t that the place Peter O’Toole was Lawrence of?”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“There was very little you had control over in the world. But your own actions, those you could make exactly what you chose to make them.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“They’d told him that they’d been waiting all their lives for someone like him, someone who’d made them believe again when they’d lost faith in the system.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“They hate us. They don’t want us here. This is our home. You and I, we were born here. We love this country. We deserve to have it love us back. They don’t care. They only care about their bullshit definition of patriotism that requires you to be white.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“He’d put the election before the truth. He’d believed the narrative that you had to come to power first, then you could do the work you held dear. That belief had turned him into a politician. Instead of the people he wanted to work for, he’d allowed the system to become his guiding force.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Sitting by her, Yash felt stiff and clunky; a legal brief next to a haiku.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“As kids we loved to swing by the hanging roots. Yash liked to pretend he was Tarzan."
"Tarzan grew up to wear a suit”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Hey, Abdul. How's the baby?" Nisha asked.
The burly giant, who could snap your neck with his bare hands and shoot you dead from five hundred feet, went as soft and fuzzy as the teddy bear Yash had brought Abdul's newborn daughter yesterday. After seeing him hold the tiny pink bundle, Yash could not for the life of him stop thinking of the man as cuddly.
"She's amazing. Has quite the lungs, just like her ammi." Abdul winked.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Rico wasn't just a friend, wasn't just Yash's media wiz. He was dating Yash's sister. Technically Ashna was his cousin but Yash only ever thought of her as his sister. Rico was family. Ashna was happy. It had been years since Yash had seen her happy. Just this morning Yash had teased Rico about his intentions toward his sister.
I intend to let Ash use my body for her shagging pleasure for the rest of my life, mate.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Most of her students would be headed to one of the other resorts today, to the places with multiple bars. India didn't begrudge them their enjoyment. During her retreats, however, she preferred that her students not imbibe, and try to stay vegetarian. The body stayed better focused on itself without alcohol messing with the nervous system. You emerged more refreshed and energized after a meditative retreat if you didn't drink or eat meat; and India had never had a student who didn't wholeheartedly agree, even if they'd started out trying to prove her wrong.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“When she turned eighteen, Tara had traveled to India in search of her father. She hadn't found him, but she had spent ten years in a yoga ashram in Jammu. She'd come home with Siddhartha, a four-year-old boy she'd adopted, and joined her mother in running the studio. Two years after that she'd adopted India from an orphanage in Bangkok, and two years after that China from an orphanage in Nairobi.
India hadn't known there was anything different about her family until a substitute teacher in her kindergarten classroom had looked at her with an expression India would come to know well as she grew up, and asked, Aren't you one of that yoga teacher's kids? The ones with the cleft lip scars adopted from three continents?
When India had told Sid about it on their way home from school, he'd said, But India and Thailand are on the same continent.
It's how India had learned that adults, even teachers, didn't always know everything. To India, their family was how families were supposed to be. Many years later, when China was in her rebellious phase, she had asked Tara why she had felt the need to adopt children from three countries.
I took a lifelong vow of celibacy. How else was I supposed to have children? That had been Tara's answer.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility