c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts.
— Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
I'm starved." -Juli"How can you be starved? You just ate a huge bowl of popcorn." -Elspeth"Popcorn isn't food, it's popcorn." -Vicki
— Lynsay Sands, A Quick Bite
The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight...[Breadmaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour ofmeditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.
— M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
Anyone who thinks they're too grown up or too sophisticated to eat caramel corn, is not invited to my house for dinner
— Ruth Reichl
Eat it," I ordered, holding it with two hands now, making it dance in the air. "It's begging you. 'Eat me'."He arched a brow."Perv," I muttered.Aiden pressed his lips together, but when he glanced at me and my dancing bun, he burst into laughter. "All right, give me the bun.
— Jennifer L. Armentrout, Apollyon
When chickens get to live like chickens, they'll taste like chickens, too.
— Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Food is a gift and should be treated reverentially--romanced and ritualized and seasoned with memory.
— Chris Bohjalian, Secrets of Eden
There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The secret of good cooking is, first, having a love of it… If you’re convinced that cooking is drudgery, you’re never going to be good at it, and you might as well warm up something frozen.
— James Beard
There is no technique, there is just the way to do it.Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?
— Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun
Great restaurants are, of course, nothing but mouth-brothels. There is no point in going to them if one intends to keep one's belt buckled.
— Frederic Raphael
Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.
— Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Cooking is an art and patience a virtue... Careful shopping, freshingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need. There is one more thing - love. Love for food and love for those you invite to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist - not perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like Gauguin, the naïve, or Van Gogh,the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sunshine taste of happiness and love.
— Keith Floyd
Someone who eats pancakes and jam can't be so awfully dangerous. You can talk to him.
— Tove Jansson, Finn Family Moomintroll
Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
It's salt. Why don't you sprinkle some on me, honey? Aren't I just good enough to eat?
— Grant Morrison, Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth
I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas - fat, drugged, and completely out of it.
— Anthony Bourdain
I will not eat them in a house, i will not eat them with a mouse,i will not eat them in a box i will not eat them with a fox, i will not eat them here of there i will not eat them anywhere, I do not like green eggs and ham i do not like them sam i am
— Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham
Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.
— James Joyce, Ulysses
After a full belly all is poetry.
— Frank McCourt
A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards. A man dies and is buried, and all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten lives after him in the sound or rotten bones of his children. I think it could be plausibly argued that changes of diet are more important than changes of dynasty or even of religion....Yet it is curious how seldom the all-importance of food is recognized. You see statues everywhere to politicians, poets, bishops, but none to cooks or bacon-curers or market gardeners.
— George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier
I wondered what you'd have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?
— Robin McKinley, Sunshine
When engaged in eating, the brain should be the servant of the stomach.
— Agatha Christie
My own feeling is that if adultery is wickedness then so is food. Both make me feel so much better afterward.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Hocus Pocus
To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.
— W. Somerset Maugham
She spoke of evenings in the country making popcorn on the porch. Once this would have gladdened my heart but because her heart was not glad when she said it I knew there was nothing in it but the idea of what one should do.
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Food, like a loving touch or a glimpse of divine power,has that ability to comfort.
— Norman Kolpas
I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. When one's hostess starts in with self-deprecations such as "Oh, I don't know how to cook...," or "Poor little me...," or "This may taste awful...," it is so dreadful to have to reassure her that everything is delicious and fine, whether it is or not. Besides, such admissions only draw attention to one's shortcomings (or self-perceived shortcomings), and make the other person think, "Yes, you're right, this really is an awful meal!" Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed -- eh bien, tant pis! Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile, as my ersatz eggs Florentine surely were, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile -- and learn from her mistakes.
— Julia Child, My Life in France
Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well.
— James Joyce, Dubliners
Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.
— Wendell Berry
Health food makes me sick.
— Calvin Trillin
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, Eating Animals
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, 1Q84
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
The trouble with eating Italian is that 5 or 6 days later, you're hungry again.
— George    Miller
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, Mastering the Art of French Cooking
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, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
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, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant : Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone
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
Every restaurant is a theater, and the truly great ones allow us to indulge in the fantasy that we are rich and powerful. When restaurants hold up their end of the bargain, they give us the illusion of being surrounded by servants intent on ensuring our happiness and offering extraordinary food. But even modest restaurants offer the opportunity to become someone else, at least for a little while. Restaurants free us from mundane reality; that is part of their charm. When you walk through the door, you are entering neutral territory where you are free to be whoever you choose for the duration of the meal.
— Ruth Reichl
Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness.
— John Ruskin
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, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine
A mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most impeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an out-lying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place.
— Mark Twain
The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.--The Fruit Hunters
— Thomas Jefferson, The Quotable 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, Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater
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, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
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, The Namesake
There is absolutely no substitute for the best. Good food cannot be made of inferior ingredients masked with high flavor. It is true thrift to use the best ingredients available and to waste nothing.
— James Beard
The gentle art of gastronomy is a friendly one. It hurdles the language barrier, makes friends among civilized people, and warms the heart.
— Samuel V. Chamberlain
You're a wrestler, right, Jake?" Dad asked, passing Jake more saag. My parents were in an Indian food phase. The evening's entree consisted of limp spinach. God forbid we'd throw a few burgers on the grill and just have a barbecue when guests came over.Jake gave the bright green, mushy contents a wary glance but accepted the bowl. "Yeah. I wrestle. I'm captain this year.""How Greco-Roman of you," Lucius said dryly, lifting a glob of spinach and letting it drip, slowly, from his fork. "Grappling about on mats.
— Beth Fantaskey, Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side
I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.
— Terry Pratchett, Mort
Nothing rekindles my spirits, gives comfort to my heart and mind, more than a visit to Mississippi... and to be regaled as I often have been, with a platter of fried chicken, field peas, collard greens, fresh corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes with French dressing... and to top it all off with a wedge of freshly baked pecan pie.
— Craig Claiborne
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, All's Fair in Love, War, and High School
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, Silver Phoenix
This story about good food begins in a quick-stop convenience market.
— Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
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
If man be sensible and one fine morning, while he is lying in bed,counts at the tips of his fingers how many things in this life truly willgive him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first one.
— Lin Yutang
I'd rather eat nothing than eat a carrot.
— Marian Keyes, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married
Parsley is gharsley.
— Ogden Nash, Food
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, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
A good meal soothes the soul as it regenerates the body.From the abundance of it flows a benign benevolence.
— Frederick W. Hackwood
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, The Kitchen Mystic: Spiritual Lessons Hidden in Everyday Life
I’m going to break one of the rules of the trade here. I’m going to tell you some of the secrets of improvisation. Just remember—it’s always a good idea to follow the directions exactly the first time you try a recipe. But from then on, you’re on your own.
— James Beard
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, How to Cook a Wolf
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, Envy
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, Fury's Kiss
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, Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog
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, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
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, Color Me Vegan: Maximize Your Nutrient Intake and Optimize Your Health by Eating Antioxidant-Rich, Fiber-Packed, Color-Intense Meals That Taste Great
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, Handle with Care
It can be challenge enough to have to eat with myself.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
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, Bread and   Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes
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, Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect
That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund.
— Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
She felt so lost and lonely. One last chile in walnut sauce left on the platter after a fancy dinner couldn't feel any worse than she did. How many times had she eaten one of those treats, standing by herself in the kitchen, rather than let it be thrown away. When nobody eats the last chile on the plate, it's usually because none of them wants to look like a glutton, so even though they'd really like to devour it, they don't have the nerve to take it. It was as if they were rejecting that stuffed pepper, which contains every imaginable flavor; sweet as candied citron, juicy as pomegranate, with the bit of pepper and the subtlety of walnuts, that marvelous chile in the walnut sauce. Within it lies the secret of love, but it will never be penetrated, and all because it wouldn't feel proper.
— Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate
To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
Because cooks love the social aspect of food, cooking for one is intrinsically interesting. A good meal is like a present, and it can feel goofy, at best, to give yourself a present. On the other hand, there is something life affirming in taking the trouble to feed yourself well, or even decently. Cooking for yourself allows you to be strange or decadent or both. The chances of liking what you make are high, but if it winds up being disgusting, you can always throw it away and order a pizza; no one else will know. In the end, the experimentation, the impulsiveness, and the invention that such conditions allow for will probably make you a better cook.
— Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant : Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone
There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.
— M.F.K. Fisher
Our holiday food splurge was a small crate of tangerines, which we found ridiculously thrilling after an eight-month abstinence from citrus.... Lily hugged each one to her chest before undressing it as gently as a doll. Watching her do that as she sat cross-legged on the floor one morning in pink pajamas, with bliss lighting her cheeks, I thought: Lucky is the world, to receive this grateful child. Value is not made of money, but a tender balance of expectation and longing.
— Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Taking solitude in stride was a sign of strength and of a willingness to take care of myself. This meant - among other things - working productively, remembering to leave the house, and eating well. I thought about food all the time. I had a subscription to Gourmet and Food & Wine. Cooking for others had often been my way of offering care. So why, when I was alone, did I find myself trying to subsist on cereal and water? I'd need to learn to cook for one.
— Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant : Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone
Food, a French man told me once, is the first wealth. Grow it right, and you feel insanely rich, no matter what you own.
— Kristin Kimball
Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat - and drink! - with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.
— M.F.K. Fisher, Serve It Forth
But carbon 13 [the carbon from corn] doesn't lie, and researchers who have compared the isotopes in the flesh or hair of Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn.... Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar. So that's us: processed corn, walking.
— Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
He looked at the piles of food again, and it was like he was seeing it with new eyes. "This is wrong", he thought, "Letting food rot while people die of hunger. It's evil."....He breathed in the too-sweet smell of rotting food, "I can stop this evil.
— Margaret Peterson Haddix, Among the Enemy
If I order an appetizer is there any chance I can get it quickly? I'm two and a half months pregnant with a Bradford," she said, not mentioning it was twins because the thought was actually starting to scare her and she hadn't told Trevor yet and didn't want him finding out this way. She just hoped the woman understood because she was close to crying. Judging by the slightly startled look on the woman's face she did.The waitress shook her head. "No, you're right. You probably won't be able to survive the wait," she said, sending Trevor, who was still trying to get the woman to leave, a glare. "I'll bring you out a bowl of clam chowder followed by chicken fingers, they'll only take a few minutes to prepare. Will that work?"Zoe nodded solemnly. "You are my hero.""I'll put a rush on your food," the waitress said before walking away."Bless you," Zoe said, fighting the urge to kiss the woman.
— R.L. Mathewson, Perfection
Pecans are not cheap, my hons. In fact, in the South, the street value of shelled pecans just before holiday baking season is roughly that of crack cocaine. Do not confuse the two. It is almost impossible to make a decent crack cocaine tassie, I am told.
— Celia Rivenbark, You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning
You may feel that you have eaten too much...But this pastry is likefeathers - it is like snow. It is in fact good for you, a digestive!
— M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
All men are hungry. They always have been. They must eat, and when they deny themselves the pleasures of carrying out that need, they are cutting off part of their possible fullness, their natural realization of life, whether they are poor or rich.
— M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf
You are eating the sea, that's it, only the sensation of a gulp of sea water has been wafted out of it by some sorcery, and you are on the verge of remembering you don't know what, mermaids or the sudden smell ofkelp on the ebb tide or a poem you read once, something connectedwith the flavor of life itself...
— Eleanor   Clark, The Oysters of Locmariaquer
Some breakfast food manufacturer hit upon the simple notion of emptying out the leavings of carthorse nose bags, adding a few other things like unconsumed portions of chicken layer's mash, and the sweepings of racing stables, packing the mixture in little bags and selling them in health food shops.
— Frank  Muir
If you think of someone's good qualities as the umeboshi in an onigiri it's as if their qualities are stuck to their back! Maybe the reason people get jealous of each other is because they can see so clearly the umeboshi on other people's backs.
— Natsuki Takaya, Fruits Basket, Vol. 2
The longing for sweets is really a yearning for love or "sweetness.
— Marion Woodman
Tita knew through her own flesh how fire transforms the elements, how a lump of corn flour is changed into a tortilla, how a soul that hasn't been warmed by the fire of love is lifeless, like a useless ball of corn flour.
— Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate
One of the very best things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.
— Luciano Pavarotti
Sorry, there´s no magic bullet. You gotta eat healthy and live healthy to be healthy and look healthy. End of story.
— Morgan Spurlock, Don't Eat This Book
In my lame pescetarian defense, it's very hard to be a girl and say you won't eat something. Refuse one plate of bacon-wrapped pork rinds and you're anorexic. Accept them and you're on the Atkins. Excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and you're bulimic. Best to keep perfectly still and bring an IV of fluids with you to dinner.
— Sloane Crosley, I Was Told There'd Be Cake
Here are two facts that should not both be true: - There is sufficient food produced in the world every year to feed every human being on the planet. - Nearly 800 million people literally go hungry every day, with more than a third of the earth's population -- 2 billion men and women -- malnourished one way or another, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
— Michael Dorris, Rooms in the House of Stone: The "Thistle" Series of Essays
Like most humans, I am hungry...our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it...
— M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical Me
The onion is the truffle of the poor.
— Robert J. Courtine
...it was so rich and exotic I was seduced into taking one bite and then another as I tried to chase the flavors back to their source.
— Ruth Reichl
Suffering... is not just lots of pain but pain amplified by distinctly human emotions such as regret, self-pity, shame, humiliation, and dread.
— Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
For desert, maybe we can split a couple of crumbs.
— Nicholas Sparks, Dear John
Student food." His eyes went to the tomato on the sill. "Whatever's in the refrigerator over pasta.
— Kim Harrison, Dead Witch Walking
No more fear of hunger. A new kind of freedom. But what then ... what? What would my life be like on a daily basis? Most of it has been consumed with the acquisition of food. Take that away and I'm not really sure who I am, what my identity is. The idea scares me some.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
Is food a substitute for love? No, love is a substitute for food. And a pretty poor substitute at that.
— Rohan Candappa
I cannot go any further without mentioning my favourite biscuit of all time, now sadly, tragically, extinct. The oaty, crumbly, demerara notes of the long-forgotten Abbey Crunch will remain forever on my lips. I loved the biscuit as much as anything I have ever eaten, and often, in moments of solitude, I still think about its warm, buttery, sugary self.
— Nigel Slater, Eating for England: The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at the Table
There was real plasure to be had eating ice cream out of container and pickles out of a glass jar, standing up at the counter. I wondered whether the cravings associated with pregnancy were really only a matter of women feeling empowered to admit their odd longings to their husbands, to ask another person to bring them the eccentric combinations they'd long enjoyed in private.
— Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant : Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone
Her cuisine is limited but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchw
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Naval Treaty
I finally figured out the big, elusive secret to weight loss. Don't eat! Who knew?
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
You know, the act of feeding someone is the ultimate act of care and affection...sharing yourself with someone else through food." He held another mouthful of cake under her nose. "Think about it. We are fed in the Eucharist, by our mothers when we are infants, by our parents as children, by friends at dinner parties, by a lover when we feast on one another's bodies...and on occasion, on another's souls.
— Sylvain Reynard, Gabriel's Inferno
The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet and dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get that aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off. That means beignets and crayfish bisque and jambalaya, it means shrimp remoulade, pecan pie, and red beans with rice, it means elegant pompano au papillote, funky file z'herbes, and raw oysters by the dozen, it means grillades for breakfast, a po' boy with chowchow at bedtime, and tubs of gumbo in between. It is not unusual for a visitor to the city to gain fifteen pounds in a week--yet the alternative is a whole lot worse. If you don't eat day and night, if you don't constantly funnel the indigenous flavors into your bloodstream, then the mystery beast will go right on humping you, and you will feel its sordid presence rubbing against you long after you have left town. In fact, like any sex offender, it can leave permanent psychological scars.
— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
Invest in what's real. Clean as you go. Drink while you cook. Make it fun. It doesn't have to be complicated. It will be what it will be.
— Gwyneth Paltrow, My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness
I hate the notion of a secret recipe. Recipes are by nature derivative and meant to be shared - that is how they improve, are changed, how new ideas are formed. To stop a recipe in it's tracks, to label it "secret" just seems mean.
— Molly Wizenberg
And if that weren't bad enough, the next sound he heard was a loud click.The damned woman had locked him out. She'd taken all the food and locked him out."You'll pay for this!" he yelled at the door."Do be quiet," came the muffled reply. "I'm eating.
— Julia Quinn, To Catch an Heiress
My favourite food is cake.What kind of cake?It doesn't matter. All cake.
— Jenny Han, To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before
If you are able to introduce a white person to a new cheese, it's like introducing them to a future spouse.
— Christian Lander, Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions
Would it really be so bad if you slowed your life down even a teensy bit? If you took charge of the ingredients of your food instead of letting corporations stuff you and your family, like baby birds, full of sugar, corn products, chemicals, and meat from really, really unhappy animals?
— Catherine Friend, Compassionate Carnivore: Or, How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old Macdonald's Farm, Reduce Your Hoofprint, and Still Eat Meat
Kissing don't last: cookery do !
— George Meredith
Was he hungry? He'd had an enormous breakfast, but the transition from the glimpse had taken a lot out of him. Did they serve lunch in Hell? Should he have packed a snack? Why was he suddenly thinking about food?
— Melissa de la Cruz, Lost in Time
I can't be a cream puff.
— Buddy Valastro
In another telling anomaly of the meat-grinding business, many of the larger slaughterhouses will sell their product only to grinders who agree to not test their product for E. coli contamination--until after it's run through a grinder with a whole bunch of other meat from other sources...It's like demanding of a date that she have unprotected sex with four or five other guys immediately before sleeping with you--just so she can't point the finger directly at you should she later test positive for clap.
— Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
She felt about her zester the way some women do about a pair of spiky red shoes--a frivolous splurge, good only for parties, but oh so lovely.
— Erica Bauermeister
We generally accept that it's natural for carnivorous wild animals to kill other animals in order to live. But people don't often think (or even know) about the extraordinary and unnatural suffering that humans inflict on the animals that we freely harvest for food, with the help of modern high technology and the animal food sciences.
— Marc Bekoff, Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect
Oh my lovely princess,"Raoden whispered. "You probably mean well, but handing these people food is the worst thing you could do to them."-Brandon Sanderson(Elantris)
— Brandon Sanderson, Elantris
Almost anything is edible with a dab of French mustard on it.
— Nigel Slater, The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater
White people are drawn to farmer’s markets like moths to a flame. In fact, white people have such strong instincts that ifyou release a white person into a random Saturday morning they will return to you with a reusable bag full of fruits and vegetables.
— Christian Lander, Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions
Seating themselves on the greensward, they eat while the corks fly and there is talk, laughter and merriment, and perfect freedom, for the universe is their drawing room and the sun their lamp. Besides, they have appetite, Nature's special gift, which lends to such a meal a vivacity unknown indoors, however beautiful the surroundings.
— Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
I just inhaled kimchi ramen. Nose on fire. Next chapter may be obscured by tears.
— MCM
I like bread, and I like butter - but I like bread with butter best.
— Sarah Weiner
The first supermarket supposedly appeared on the American landscape in 1946. That is not very long ago. Until then, where was all the food? Dear folks, the food was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. It was near kitchens, near tables, near bedsides. It was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard.
— Joel Salatin, Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World
Imagine if we had a food system that actually produced wholesome food. Imagine if it produced that food in a way that restored the land. Imagine if we could eat every meal knowing these few simple things: What it is we’re eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what it really cost. If that was the reality, then every meal would have the potential to be a perfect meal. We would not need to go hunting for our connection to our food and the web of life that produces it. We would no longer need any reminding that we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and that what we’re eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world. I don’t want to have to forage every meal. Most people don’t want to learn to garden or hunt. But we can change the way we make and get our food so that it becomes food again—something that feeds our bodies and our souls. Imagine it: Every meal would connect us to the joy of living and the wonder of nature. Every meal would be like saying grace.
— Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
A little chocolate a day keeps the doctor at bay
— Marcia Carrington
Wickedness was like food: once you got started it was hard to stop
—  the gut expanded to take in more and more.
Nobody knows the truffles I've seen.
— George Lang, Nobody Knows the Truffles I've Seen
Perhaps this war will make it simpler for us to go back to some of the old ways we knew before we came over to this land and made the Big Money. Perhaps, even, we will remember how to make good bread again.It does not cost much. It is pleasant: one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with peace, and the house filled with one of the world's sweetest smells. But it takes a lot of time. If you can find that, the rest is easy. And if you cannot rightly find it, make it, for probably there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel, that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.
— M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf
I act delighted, but I have zero interest in these Capitol people. They are only distractions from the food.
— Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire
Anisette! You will eat your food, not demonstrate aerial warfare across the table with it.
— T.A. Miles, Raventide
I don't care what you Yanks say, cheese should not whiz.
— Janette Rallison, My Fair Godmother
I like rice. Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2000 of something. 
— Mich Ehrenborg
Like pornography, junk [food] might be tough to define but you know it when you see it.
— Mark Bittman, VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lose Weight and Restore Your Health . . . for Good
In my food world, there is no fear or guilt, only joy and balance. So no ingredient is ever off-limits. Rather, all of the recipes here follow my Usually-Sometimes-Rarely philosophy. Notice there is no Never.
— Ellie Krieger, The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life
Simultaneously the whole party moved toward the water, super-ready from the long, forced inaction, passing from the heat to the cool with the gourmandise of a tingling curry eaten with chilled white wine.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
Don't eat 'til you're full
—  eat 'til you're tired.
On the nights I stuffed myself full of myths, I dreamed of college, of being pumped full of all the old knowledge until I knew everything there was to know, all the past cultures picked clean like delicious roasted chicken.
— Lauren Groff, Delicate Edible Birds and Other Stories
When the average American says, “I’m starving,” it is a prelude to a midnight raid on a well-stocked refrigerator or a sudden trip to the nearest fast food restaurant.
— Carolyn Custis James, The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules
About eighty percent of the food on shelves of supermarkets today didn't exist 100 years ago.
— Larry McCleary, Feed Your Brain, Lose Your Belly: Experience Dynamic Weight Loss with the Brain-Belly Connection
It struck her how eating was a comfort during a hard time because it reminded you that there had been other days, good days, when you’d eaten the same thing. Reminded you there were good days in life, when precious little else did. (268)
— Ron Rash, Serena
In our heart we know that life loves life. Yet we feast on some of the other life-forms with which we share our planet; we kill to live. Taste is what carries us across that rocky moral terrain, what makes the horror palatable, and the paradox we could not defend by reason melts into a jungle of sweet temptations.
— Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating. (pg. 326, The Pleasures of Eating)
— Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays
There he got out the luncheon-basket and packed a simple meal, in which, remembering the stranger's origin and preferences, he took care to include a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes.
— Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
Peanut butter is the pate of childhood.
— Florence Fabricant
(We loved Mother too, completely, but we were finding out, as Father was too, that it is good for parents and for children to be alone now and then with one another...the man alone or the woman, to sound new notes in the mysterious music of parenthood and childhood.)That night I not only saw my Father for the first time as a person. I saw the golden hills and the live oaks as clearly as I have ever seen them since; and I saw the dimples in my little sister's fat hands in a way that still moves me because of that first time; and I saw food as something beautiful to be shared with people instead of as a thrice-daily necessity.
— M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical Me
That anyone should need to write a book advising people to "eat food" could be taken as a measure of our alienation and confusion. Or we can choose to see it in a more positive light and count ourselves fortunate indeed that there is once again real food for us to eat.
— Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
...I was not prepared for the feel of the noodles in my mouth, or the purity of the taste. I had been in Japan for almost a month, but I had never experiences anything like this. The noodles quivered as if they were alive, and leapt into my mouth where they vibrated as if playing inaudible music.
— Ruth Reichl
The playwright Edward Albee has characterized [the suddenness of the appearance of fruits and flowers in evolutionary history] as 'that heartbreaking second when it all got together: the sugars and the acids and the ultraviolets, and the next thing you knew there were tangerines and string quartets.
— Adam Leith Gollner, The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce, and Obsession
Well, Southerners like to eat well. You see, it's an event when it's done right.
— Stan Shaw
Appetite has really become an artificial and abnormal thing, having taken the place of true hunger, which alone is natural. The one is a sign of bondage but the other, of freedom.
— Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton
The center [of the supermarket] is for boxed, frozen, processed, made-to-sit-on-your-shelf-for-months food. You have to ask yourself, "If this food is designed to sit in a box for month and months, what is it doing inside my body?" Nothing good, that´s for sure.
— Morgan Spurlock, Don't Eat This Book
I would advocate that chocolate be covered by health insurance, but that is admittedly a very French public policy perspective.
— Mireille Guiliano, French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes, and Pleasure
Food for her is not food, it is terror, dignity, gratitude, vengeance, joyfulness, humiliation, religion, history, and, of course, love. As if the fruit she always offered us were picked from the destroyed brances of out family tree.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
So this is what commodity corn can do to a cow: industrialize the miracle of nature that is a ruminant, taking this sunlight- and prairie grass-powered organism and turning it into the last thing we need: another fossil fuel machine. This one, however, is able to suffer. 
— Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Grits are hot; they are abundant, and they will by-gosh stick to your ribs. Give your farmhands (that is, your children) cold cereal for breakfast and see how many rows they hoe. Make them a pot of grits and butter, and they’ll hoe till dinner and be glad to do it.
— Janis Owens, The Cracker Kitchen: A Cookbook in Celebration of Cornbread-Fed, Down Home Family Stories and Cuisine
He lay back for a little in his bed thinking about the smells of food… of the intoxicating breath of bakeries and dullness of buns… He planned dinners, of enchanting aromatic foods… endless dinners, in which one could alternate flavor with flavor from sunset to dawn without satiety, while one breathed great draughts of the bouquet of brandy.
— Evelyn Waugh