Julia child quotes

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

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.

In the 1960s, you could eat anything you wanted, and of course, people were smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, and there was no talk about fat and anything like that, and butter and cream were rife. Those were lovely days for gastronomy, I must say.

Learn how to cook! That's the way to save money. You don't save it buying hamburger helpers, and prepared foods; you save it by buying fresh foods in season or in large supply, when they are cheapest and usually best, and you prepare them from scratch at home. Why pay for someone else's work, when if you know how to do it, you can save all that money for yourself?

No matter what happens in the kitchen, never apologize.

Just like becoming an expert in wine, you learn by drinking it, the best you can afford.

A party without cake is really just a meeting.

I enjoy cooking with wine, sometimes I even put it in the food I'm cooking.

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.

I have trouble with toast. Toast is very difficult. You have to watch it all the time or it burns up.

Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again

If you are going to flip something, you must have the courage of your convictions.

We should enjoy food and have fun. It is one of the simplest and nicest pleasures in life.

Cassoulet, that best of bean feasts, is everyday fare for a peasant but ambrosia for a gastronome, though its ideal consumer is a 300-pound blocking back who has been splitting firewood nonstop for the last twelve hours on a subzero day in Manitoba.

...nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should.

One of the important requirements for learning how to cook is that you also learn how to eat.

Wine is a living liquid containing no preservatives. Its life cycle comprises youth, maturity, old age, and death. When not treated with reasonable respect it will sicken and die.

There are reasons, and then there are excuses.

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.

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

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.

Eating is the secret to good cooking.

You must have discipline to have fun.

To be a good cook you have to have a love of the good, a love of hard work, and a love of creating.

Pro-choice is the only way to be-- because women are human beings, after all, and should be treated as such.

The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken.

the more experience you have, the more interesting cooking is because you know what can happen to the food. In the beginning you can look at a chicken and it doesn't mean much, but once you have done some cooking you can see in that chicken a parade of things you will be able to create.

When you flip anything, you really you just have to have the courage of your convictions.

With enough butter, anything is good

You have to eat to cook. You can't be a good cook and be a noneater. I think eating is the secret to good cooking.

People who are not interested in food always seem rather dry and unloving and don't have a real gusto for life.

Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music.

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.

A passionate interest in what you do is the secret of enjoying life...whether it is helping old people or children, or making cheese or growing earthworms.

I don't use the word gourmet. The word doesn't mean anything anymore. 'Gourmet' makes it sound like someone is putting sherry wine in the corn-flake casserole.

Dining with one's friends and beloved family is certainly one of life's primal and most innocent delights, one that is both soul-satisfying and eternal.

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.

Just how could a nation often be great if it's bread tastes want Kleenex.

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.

Everything can have drama if it's done right. Even a pancake.

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.

I wouldn't keep him around long if I didn't feed him well.

People who love to eat are always the best people.

You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made. Even after you eat it, it stays with you - always.

Any disaster is a learning process.

Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.

It's a shame to be caught up in something that doesn't absolutely make you tremble with joy.

I would far prefer to have things happen as they naturally do, such as the mousse refusing to leave the mold, the potatoes sticking to the skillet, the apple charlotte slowly collapsing. One of the secrets of cooking is to learn to correct something if you can, and bear with it if you cannot.

Sooner or later the public will forget you; the memory of you will fade. What's important are the individuals you've influenced along the way.

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.

Always remember: If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?

In spite of food fads, fitness programs, and health concerns, we must never lose sight of a beautifully conceived meal.

The more you know, the more you can create. There's no end to imagination in the kitchen.

I think careful cooking is love, don't you?

Forget the cheap white wine: go to beef and gin!

Remember, you are all alone in the kitchen and no one can see you.

The sweetness and generosity and politeness and gentleness and humanity of the French had shown me how lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly.

...no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing.

The dinner hour is a sacred, happy time when everyone should be together and relaxed.

Cooking well doesn't mean cooking fancy.

It is the Americans who have managed to crown minced beef as hamburger, and to send it round the world so that even the fussy French have taken to le boeuf hache, le hambourgaire.

Romance is the icing but love is the cake.

I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make.... Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile...then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile.

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

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.

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

How lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly.

It is hard to imagine a civilization without onions.

I think every woman should have a blowtorch.

Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verbalize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which cause me to back down from forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional at the expense of careful, 'scientific' though. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.

Cooking is one failure after another, and that's how you finally learn.

We are so bemused by our own petard, that we are unable to look at things objectively.

Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet.

This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!

Life itself is the proper binge.

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

Many of the delicious soups you eat in French homes and little restaurants are made just this way, with a leek-and-potato base to which leftover vegetables or sauces and a few fresh items are added.

It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it.

Never apologize for your cooking.

The egg can be your best friend if you just give it the right break

There is nothing nicer than a kitchen really made for a cook. Things that are designed to be used always have an innate beauty.

You are the butter to my bread,and the breath to my life

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.

Ye gods! But you're not standing around holding it by the hand all this time. No. [...] [T]he dough takes care of itself. [...] While you cannot speed up the process, you can slow it down at any point by setting the dough in a cooler place [...] then continue where you left off, when you are ready to do so. In other words, you are the boss of that dough.

Fake food -- I mean those patented substances chemically flavored and mechanically bulked out to kill the appetite and deceive the gut -- is unnatural, almost immoral, a bane to good eating and good cooking.

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

As you get older, you shouldn't waste time drinking bad wine.

The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It's doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile.

Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need.

Anything that says 'healthy' I say away from... Giving up butter, for instance, means that in about two years you will be covered in dandruff.

I always give my bird a generous butter massage before I put it in the oven. Why? Because I think the chicken likes it -- and, more important, I like to give it.

In France cooking is a serious art form and a national sport. I think the French enjoy the complication of the art form and the cooking for cooking's sake. You can talk with a concierge or police officer about food in France as a general rule. It is not the general rule here. Classical cuisine, which I hope we are going back to, means certain ways of doing things and certain ways of not doing things. If you know classical French cooking you can do anything. If you don't know the basics, you turn out slop.

You have to do it and do it, until you get it right.

Without peanuts, it isn't a cocktail party.

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

Food like love is a deeply emotional matter.

A house without a cat is like a day without sunshine, a pie without fromage, a dinner without wine.

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.

Cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. And cooking draws upon your every talent--science, mathematics, energy, history, experience--and the more experience you have, the less likely are your experiments to end in drivel and disaster. The more you know, the more you can create.

Moderation. Small helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets of happiness and good health.

Noodles are not only amusing but delicious.

Sometimes ... it takes me an entire day to write a recipe, to communicate it correctly. It's really like writing a little short story.

I’m awfully sorry for people who are taken in by all of today’s dietary mumbo jumbo. They are not getting any enjoyment out of their food.

Wine is one of the agreeable and essential ingredients of life

My father was in real estate, banking, and land management. As family life, it was very conventional, happy, and comfortable. We weren't wealthy, but we were well-off.

We ought to enjoy our food, we ought to take time and care and prepare it correctly, and we ought to have fun doing it and make it a communal event.

I never feel lonely in the kitchen. Food is very friendly.

Just speak very loudly and quickly, and state your position with utter conviction, as the French do, and you'll have a marvelous time!

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.

The tomato hides its griefs. Internal damage is hard to spot.

You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients.

I admired the English immensely for all that they had endured, and they were certainly honorable, and stopped their cars for pedestrians, and called you “sir” and “madam,” and so on. But after a week there, I began to feel wild. It was those ruddy English faces, so held in by duty, the sense of “what is done” and “what is not done,” and always swigging tea and chirping, that made me want to scream like a hyena

The problem for cookery-bookery writers like me is to understand the extent of our readers' experience. I hope have solved that riddle in my books by simply telling everything. The experienced cook will know to skip through the verbiage, but the explanations will be there for those who still need them.

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.

Was it a sign of Creeping Decrepitude?

A cookbook is only as good as its poorest recipe.

I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.

The main thing is to have a gutsy approach and use your head.

Too much trouble," "Too expensive," or "Who will know the difference" are death knells for good food.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking... doesn't mean it has to be fancy cooking, although it can be as elaborate as you wish.

One of the secrets, and pleasures, of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed.

If you're afraid of butter, use cream.

Fat gives things flavor.

Until I discovered cooking, I was never really interested in anything.

If you're not ready to fail, you're not going to learn how to cook.