Food Quotes

Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well.

~ James Joyce

We need a better way to talk about eating animals. We need a way that brings meat to the center of public discussion in the same way it is often at the center of our plates. This doesn't require that we pretend we are going to have a collective agreement. However strong our intuitions are about what's right for us personally and even about what's right for others, we all know in advance that our positions will clash with those of our neighbors. What do we do with that most inevitable reality? Drop the conversation, or find a way to reframe it?

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

She lived frugally, but her meals were the only things on which she deliberately spent her money. She never compromised on the quality of her groceries, and drank only good-quality wines.

~ Haruki Murakami

Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes.

~ Norman Douglas

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

To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.

~ Anthony Bourdain

To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.

~ François De La Rochefoucauld

I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.

~ M.f.k. Fisher

The fact is, I love to feed other people. I love their pleasure, their comfort, their delight in being cared for. Cooking gives me the means to make other people feel better, which in a very simple equation makes me feel better. I believe that food can be a profound means of communication, allowing me to express myself in a way that seems much deeper and more sincere than words. My Gruyere cheese puffs straight from the oven say 'I'm glad you're here. Sit down, relax. I'll look after everything.'- Ann Patchett, Dinner For One, Please, James

~ Jenni Ferrari-Adler

Ordinary folk prefer familiar tastes - they'd sooner eat the same things all the time - but a gourmet would sample a fried park bench just to know how it tastes.

~ Walter Moers

To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean.

~ Elizabeth David

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.--The Fruit Hunters

~ Thomas Jefferson

I suppose there are people who can pass up free guacamole, but they're either allergic to avocado or too joyless to live.

~ Frank Bruni

The fridge had been emptied of all Dudley’s favorite things — fizzy drinks and cakes, chocolate bars and burgers — and filled instead with fruit and vegetables and the sorts of things that Uncle Vernon called “rabbit food.

~ J.k. Rowling

On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in bowl.

~ Jhumpa Lahiri

I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.

~ Terry Pratchett

If I liked food and disliked exercise as much as a 400 pound guy, I'd be a 400 pound guy.

~ Scott Adams

Goose neck is a delicacy. You have to at least try it. In fancy restaurants people pay up to fifty dollars a plate for this stuff.' And at our house we were force-fed it for free. Just another irony of life.

~ Janette Rallison

A plate of roast duck, steamed dumplings, spicy noodles with beef gravy, pickled cucumbers, stewed tongue and eggs if you have them, cold please, and sticky rice pearls, too,' Ai Ling said, before the server girl could open her mouth. I don't know what he wants. Ai Ling nodded toward Chen Yong.'I'm not sure I have enough coins to order anything more,' he said, laughing.

~ Cindy Pon

This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market.

~ Barbara Kingsolver

First we eat, then we do everything else.

~ M.f.k. Fisher

Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.

~ James Beard

The food in the South is as important as food anywhere because it defines a person's culture.

~ Fannie Flagg

Well let's face it, who on earth besides antique dealers and gay couples actually still give dinner parties?

~ Nigel Slater

I'd rather eat nothing than eat a carrot.

~ Marian Keyes

Parsley is gharsley.

~ Ogden Nash

The sheer novelty and glamor of the Western diet, with its seventeen thousand new food products every year and the marketing power - thirty-two billion dollars a year - used to sell us those products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and government and marketing to help us decide what to eat.

~ Michael Pollan

Amen,' I exclaim, accidentally spitting out a Raisinet. I pick up the chocolate with a Kleenex and stuff it in my purse. Ten bucks says a month from now I'll have forgotten about it and will finally have said heart attack when I assume a rat shat in there.

~ Jen Lancaster

Red onions are especially divine. I hold a slice up to the sunlight pouring in through the kitchen window, and it glows like a fine piece of antique glass. Cool watery-white with layers delicately edged with imperial purple...strong, humble, peaceful...with that fiery nub of spring green in the center...

~ Mary Hayes-Grieco

I cannot count the good people I know who, to my mind, would be even better if they bent their spirits to the study of their own hungers.

~ M.f.k. Fisher

The F word turns me on, she whispered. The F word?FoodHe threw back his head and laughed. It rumbled up out of his chest and felt so good it startled him. For the first time in years,his laughter was spontaneous. It wasn`t tinged with bitterness and cynicism.

~ Sandra Brown

Success. I turned back to my sandwich, only to find that it wasn’t there anymore. Maybe because it had been hijacked. “Give me that!” I told the vamp, who was holding it firmly against his chest, a determined look on his face. “What ees zat?” he demanded, eyeing my prize. “Cheese.” I held it up. “Zat ees not cheese.” “How do you know?” “Eet is orange.” “A lot of cheese is orange.” “Non! No cheese ees that color. Cheese comes from zee milk. Zee milk, eet ees white. When ’ave you seen milk that looks like zat?” I held up the square of little slices and pointed at the bold-faced label. “Processed American Cheese.” He snatched the package, without letting go of his hostage. And eyed it warily. “Eet says ‘cheese food.’” He looked up, obviously perplexed. “What ees thees? Zee cheese, it does not eat.

~ Karen Chance

For us hunting wasn’t a sport. It was a way to be intimate with nature, that intimacy providing us with wild unprocessed food free from pesticides and hormones and with the bonus of having been produced without the addition of great quantities of fossil fuel. In addition, hunting provided us with an ever scarcer relationship in a world of cities, factory farms, and agribusiness, direct responsibility for taking the lives that sustained us. Lives that even vegans indirectly take as the growing and harvesting of organic produce kills deer, birds, snakes, rodents, and insects. We lived close to the animals we ate. We knew their habits and that knowledge deepened our thanks to them and the land that made them.

~ Ted Kerasote

Curiously, the one bodily fluid of other people that doesn't disgust us is the one produced by the human alone: tears. Consider the sole type of used tissue you'd be willing to share.

~ Michael Pollan

Oh, pity the poor gluttonWhose troubles all beginIn struggling on and on to turnWhat's out into what's in.

~ Walter De La Mare

The phytochemicals, antioxidants, and fiber- all of the healthful components of plant foods- originate in plants, not animals. If they are present, it is because the animal ate plants. And why should we go through an animal to get the benefits of the plants themselves? To consume unnecessary, unseemly, and unhealthy substances, such as saturated fat, animal protein, lactose, and dietary cholesterol, is to negate the benefits of the fiber, phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are prevalent and inherent in plants.

~ Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

I learned a long time ago with you that folks who were trying to be kind would rather do it with a macaroni-and-cheese bake than any personal involvement. You hand off a serving dish and you've done your job - no need to get personally involved, and your conscience is clean. Food is the currency of aid.

~ Jodi Picoult

It can be challenge enough to have to eat with myself.

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

To those of us who believe that all of life is sacred every crumb of bread and sip of wine is a Eucharist, a remembrance, a call to awareness of holiness right where we are.I want all of the holiness of the Eucharist to spill out beyond church walls, out of the hands of priests and into the regular streets and sidewalks, into the hands of regular, grubby people like you and me, onto our tables, in our kitchens and dining rooms and backyards.

~ Shauna Niequist

A reduction of meat consumption by only 10% would result in about 12 million more tons of grain for human consumption. This additional grain could feed all of the humans across the world who starve to death each year- about 60 million people!

~ Marc Bekoff