Food Quotes

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”
― Julia Child

“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
― Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

“I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal.”
― Voltaire

“Don't wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty.
Chocolate isn't like premarital sex. It will not make you pregnant.
And it always feels good.”
― Lora Brody

“I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will.”
― Robert Frost

“How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?”
― Charles de Gaulle

“I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food”
― Erma Bombeck

“As I got closer to the fence, I held my shirt over my nose to block the smell. One stallion waded through the muck and whinnied angrily at me. He bared his teeth, which were pointed like a bear's.
I tried to talk to him in my mind. I can do that with most horses.
Hi, I told him. I'm going to clean your stables. Won't that be great?
Yes! The horse said. Come inside! Eat you! Tasty half-blood!
But I'm Poseidon's son, I protested. He created horses.
Usually this gets me VIP treatment in the equestrian world, not this time.
Yes! The horse agreed enthusiastically. Poseidon can come in, too! We will eat you both! Seafood!
Seafood! The other horses chimed in as they waded through the field.”
― Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth

“Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

“I breathe in slowly. Food is life. I exhale, take another breath. Food is life. And that's the problem. When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out.
But it's a lie.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls

“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”
― Calvin Trillin

“He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

“Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.”
― Jo Brand

“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You're thinking I'm one of those wise-ass California vegetarians who is going to tell you that eating a few strips of bacon is bad for your health. I'm not. I say its a free country and you should be able to kill yourself at any rate you choose, as long as your cold dead body is not blocking my driveway.”
― Scott Adams

“Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.”
― G. K. Chesterton

“If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“While Leo fussed over his helm controls, Hazel and Frank relayed the story of the fish-centaurs and their training camp.
'Incredible,' Jason said. 'These are really good brownies.'
'That's your only comment?' Piper demanded.
He looked surprised. 'What? I heard the story. Fish-centaurs. Merpeople. Letter of intro to the Tiber River god. Got it. But these brownies--'
'I know,' Frank said, his mouth full. 'Try them with Ester's peach preserves.'
'That,' Hazel said, 'is incredibly disgusting.'
'Pass me the jar, man,' Jason said.
Hazel and Piper exchanged a look of total exasperation. Boys.”
― Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena

“The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.”
― Mark Twain

“Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you're a consultant.”
― Scott Adams

“You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans. ”
― Ronald Reagan

“But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals
Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .”
― Nick Cave

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”
― Laurie Colwin

“Whoever thought a tiny candy bar should be called fun size was a moron.”
― Glenn Beck

“My love is meatloaf flavored. I just wish my meatloaf was also meatloaf flavored.”
― Dora J. Arod, Love quotes for the ages. And the ageless sages.

“She asked if I loved another woman, so I answered honestly and said, “Dinner was great, but I could go for dessert.”
― Dark Jar Tin Zoo, Love Quotes for the Ages. Specifically Ages 19-91.