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“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

“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

“You're always such a good girl. Always so kind. I should have named you Empathy."
"Emotions instead of countries? What a novel idea!”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Who else can put cocoa in avocados, call it cookies and not make you gag? Who else can make wheat-germ muffins taste like actual food instead of cardboard?"
That made India laugh. "That's me, skilled at making food that doesn't make you gag and doesn't taste like cardboard.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“But this is the only life I've ever known and I feel blessed to have it. I'm proud of it. I can understand that for a man like you this feels too out there, but you're running for governor and you should be everyone's governor, and being judgmental doesn't support that.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“The Dashwoods came here from England in the 1930s and never moved."
"Then a young man from India came into their lives and lived here in the 1940s. Can you imagine what his life here might have been like? My mother tells stories of when she moved here forty years ago, and even that seems wildly brave to me sometimes. The fact that my parents chose to leave their home and come to a place where they were so different from everyone. I can't imagine leaving California ever.”
― Sonali Dev, Incense and Sensibility

“Shouldn't you be taking her to a doctor instead?"
"Oh! Why didn't we think of that?" India snapped. He could take his imperiousness elsewhere, she didn't need it. "Thank you, but we got this."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to pry. Is there anything I can do?" He continued to study Tara.
India should have told him to help by leaving. Instead she said, "You can start by fixing the damn health care system, by not making compromises on the policy you've drawn up.”
― 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

“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

“Sid Dashwood! Of course. It's so great to finally meet you. This is Naina. Naina Kohli."
"Naina Kohli, the spurned ex," Naina announced grandly, and raised the glass of water the bartender handed her. "Spurned for the love of your sister. Yay, India!" She closed her eyes and made what could only be construed as a drunk person's attempt at the om sound. "Everyone's favorite yogi.”
― Sonali Dev, The Emma Project