Cotton Quotes

“Sometimes I wonder, that one missing sock after doing laundry, is the smart one. After being unhappy for so long, it finally walks away from a frayed, worn-out relationship.”
― Anthony Liccione

“She saw night lights in the rooms of the babies who dreamed soft seersucker dreams, drugged happy with the heat, their pink baby bodies curled against worn out cotton, not fearing Hitler yet, their strong, tiny hearts beating in unison with the trees and the creeks and the bayou”
― Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“Self-serving biases and self-centered agendas are cotton jammed in the ears of our conscience. Even if truth shouts, we can’t hear it.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Like the cotton-carder who combs tangled cotton into a long bundle of fibre, you take all my knotted fragments and comb them into light.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“This stuff is better than cotton candy, really it is. It’s made out of real cotton. Yossarian, you’ve got to help me make the men eat it. Egyptian cotton is the finest cotton in the world.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“The first time I saw my father-in-law's cotton, I though of the Original Sin, gardening being the root of the South's downfall.”
― Michael Lee West, She Flew the Coop

“Cotton is cotton.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“We had a saying that we worked "from can to can't," which means working from when you can see (sunup) to when you can't (sundown).”
― Rosa Parks, Rosa Parks: My Story

“If nothing else, Alice, you will have sight of one of the grandest buildings in the city, one of the grandest ever built, in fact. That florid thing cost three hundred eighty thousand dollars to erect! It is as ornate as a cathedral. But, oh so mixed up. A bit of everything thrown in---Second Empire, Renaissance, Italian, with Corinthian columns, no less. Gold ceiling medallions, frescoes, murals, sculptures--- even a fountain, where the futures are sold. Well, not in the fountain.” Constance laughed uncertainly. “And an ornate steam elevator… Well, just don’t bid on the cotton futures.”
― Diane C. McPhail, The Seamstress of New Orleans

“If you already hate tofu, the term "tofu skin" is probably an effective emetic. But this stuff is addictive. You start by making fresh soy milk. I'm not going to soft-pedal how much work this is: you have to soak, grind, squeeze, and simmer dried soybeans. The result is a thick milk entirely unlike the soy milk you get in a box at Whole Foods in the same way Parmigiano-Reggiano is unlike Velveeta.
Then, to make tofu skins (yuba in Japanese), you simmer the soy milk gently over low heat until a skin forms on the surface, then pluck it off with your fingers and drape it over a chopstick to dry. It is exactly like the skin that forms on top of pudding, the one George Costanza wanted to market as Pudding Skin Singles. Yuba doesn't look like much- like a pile of discarded raw chicken skin, honestly. But the texture is toothsome, and with each bite you're rewarded with the flavor of fresh soy milk. It's best served with just a few drops of soy sauce and maybe some grated ginger or sliced negi.
"I'm kind of obsessed with tofu skins right now," said Iris, poking her head into the fridge to grab a round of yuba. Me too.
In Seattle, I had to buy, grind, boil, and otherwise toil for a few sheets of yuba. In Tokyo, I found it at Life Supermarket, sold in a single-serving plastic tub with a foil top. The yuba wasn't as snappy or flavorful as homemade, but it had that characteristic fresh-soy aroma, which to me smells like a combination of "healthy forest" and "clean baby." Iris and I ate it greedily. (The yuba, not the baby.)
Yuba isn't technically tofu, because the soy milk isn't coagulated. Japanese tofu comes in two basic categories, much like underpants: cotton (momen) and silken (kinugoshi). Cotton tofu is the kind eaten most commonly in the U.S.; if you buy a package of extra-firm tofu and cut it up for stir-frying, that's definitely cotton tofu.
Silken tofu is fragile, creamier and more dairy-like than cotton-tofu, and it's the star of my favorite summer tofu dish. Hiya yakko is cubes of tofu, usually silken, drizzled with soy sauce and judiciously topped with savory bits: grated ginger or daikon, bonito flakes, negi. It's popular in Japanese bars and easy to make at home, which I did, with (you will be shocked to hear) tons of fresh negi.”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“The reluctance of southern planters to grow food stemmed from more than simply greed and economic self-interest. A major concern involved what to do with their slaves, who would have more time on their hands if not out tending cotton. Planting corn exacted much time during the planting and cultivation stages, but came nowhere near matching the long cotton-picking season, which typically lasted four and often five full months. As one Georgia newspaper put it, 'No grain crop in this climate needs cultivation more than four months of the year, the remainder of the working season is unemployed. Can the farmer afford to keep his negroes, horses, and other capital idle and 'eating their heads off' for the balance of the season?”
― Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History

“On the night of All Hallow's Eve party, I sew my own black gown using the Witch Sisters' chiffon fabric, and a crown made of forged iron and dove feathers from Valentine's Town. I stand at the mirror, pressing down the silky fabric along my ribs, still feeling like myself--like a rag doll, who is also a queen. Instinctively, I tug at the thread on my wrist, but beneath the seam, I feel the softness of cotton, not the crunch of dead leaves.
When I was born, my insides were filled with air-puffed cotton--Dream Town cotton. But when Dr. Finkelstein kidnapped me, he replaced the cotton with dead leaves; he wanted no reminders of where I was really from. But now I have filled myself with both: cotton and dead leaves. Because although I am the queen of Halloween Town, I am also a daughter of Dream Town. Made of nightmares and dreams. A little of both.”
― Shea Ernshaw, Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas