Julia Child Quotes

Life itself is the proper binge.

~ Julia Child

You'll never know everything about anything, especially something you love.

~ Julia Child

Remember, 'No one's more important than people'! In other words, friendship is the most important thing--not career or housework, or one's fatigue--and it needs to be tended and nurtured.

~ Julia Child

In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and freedom; for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.

~ Julia Child

The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook.

~ Julia Child

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

~ Julia Child

If you're afraid of butter, use cream.

~ Julia Child

How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex?

~ Julia Child

Just like becoming an expert in wine–you learn by drinking it, the best you can afford–you learn about great food by finding the best there is, whether simply or luxurious. The you savor it, analyze it, and discuss it with your companions, and you compare it with other experiences.

~ Julia Child

But my favorite remained the basic roast chicken. What a deceptively simple dish. I had come to believe that one can judge the quality of a cook by his or her roast chicken. Above all, it should taste like chicken: it should be so good that even a perfectly simple, buttery roast should be a delight.

~ Julia Child

The German birds didn't taste as good as their French cousins, nor did the frozen Dutch chickens we bought in the local supermarkets. The American poultry industry had made it possible to grow a fine-looking fryer in record time and sell it at a reasonable price, but no one mentioned that the result usually tasted like the stuffing inside of a teddy bear.

~ Julia Child

I'm afraid that surprise, shock, and regret is the fate of authors when they finally see themselves on the page.

~ Julia Child

If variety is the spice of life, then my life must be one of the spiciest you ever heard of. A curry of a life. -Paul Child

~ Julia Child

...The more I learned the more I realized how very much one has to know before one is in-the-know at all.

~ Julia Child

I discovered that when one follows the artist's eye one sees unexpected treasures in so many seemingly ordinary scenes.

~ Julia Child

...the average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: These notions of yours are all very fascinating, no doubt, but we make a decent living. Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac, and my foreman enjoys his espaliered pear trees. I think as a matter of fact, we do not wish to make the changes that you suggest.

~ Julia Child

Good french cooking cannot be produced by a zombie cook.

~ Julia Child

Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper. Everything can have drama if it's done right. Even a pancake.

~ Julia Child

Fat gives things flavor.

~ Julia Child

It's fun to get together and have something good to eat at least once a day. That's what human life is all about-enjoying things.

~ Julia Child

You must have discipline to have fun.

~ Julia Child

Non-cooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment but if cooking is evanescent so is the ballet.

~ Julia Child

Being tall is an advantage, especially in business. People will always remember you. And if you're in a crowd, you'll always have some clean air to breathe.

~ Julia Child

The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they're right if you love to be with them all the time.

~ Julia Child

I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give.

~ Julia Child

I think one of the terrible things today is that people have this deathly fear of food: fear of eggs, say, or fear of butter. Most doctors feel that you can have a little bit of everything.

~ Julia Child

As we say in the American Institute of Wine and Food, small helpings, no seconds. A little bit of everything. No snacking. And have a good time.

~ Julia Child

I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.

~ Julia Child

You learn to cook so that you don't have to be a slave to recipes. You get what's in season and you know what to do with it.

~ Julia Child

Because of media hype and woefully inadequate information, too many people nowadays are deathly afraid of their food, and what does fear of food do to the digestive system? I am sure that an unhappy or suspicious stomach, constricted and uneasy with worry, cannot digest properly.

~ Julia Child

When I got to France I realized I didn't know very much about food at all. I'd never had a real cake. I'd had those cakes from cake mixes or the ones that have a lot of baking powder in them. A really good French cake doesn't have anything like that in it - it's all egg power.

~ Julia Child

In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.

~ Julia Child

Animals that we eat are raised for food in the most economical way possible, and the serious food producers do it in the most humane way possible. I think anyone who is a carnivore needs to understand that meat does not originally come in these neat little packages.

~ Julia Child

I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make.

~ Julia Child

I hate organized religion. I think you have to love thy neighbor as thyself. I think you have to pick your own God and be true to him. I always say 'him' rather than 'her.' Maybe it's because of my generation, but I don't like the idea of a female God. I see God as a benevolent male.

~ Julia Child

In the 1970s we got nouvelle cuisine, in which a lot of the old rules were kicked over. And then we had cuisine minceur, which people mixed up with nouvelle cuisine but was actually fancy diet cooking.

~ Julia Child

What a marvelous resource soup is for the thrifty cook - it solves the ham-bone and lamb-bone problems, the everlasting Thanksgiving turkey, the extra vegetables.

~ Julia Child

In department stores, so much kitchen equipment is bought indiscriminately by people who just come in for men's underwear.

~ Julia Child