Peg Bracken Quotes

I've never found anything whatsoever that is as easy to do the right way as the wrong way, and if there is such a thing I would like to know about it.

When people say it's a funny thing about them, you will probably be able to control your hysterics. They are only getting ready to announce the shattering fact that they don't like something. And it's not going to be something that's really quite awful, like suttee or apartheid; it's going to be something small.

Many people choose, early on, their own truths from the large smorgasbord available. And once they've chosen them, for good reason or no reason, they then proceed rather selectively, wisely gathering whatever will bolster them or at least carry out the color scheme.

People would have more leisure time if it weren't for all the leisure-time activities that use it up.

The fact is, the cocktail party has much in its favor. Going to one is a good way of indicating that you're still alive and about, if such is the case, and that you're glad other people are, without having to spend an entire evening proving it.

Cheese for dessert is rather like Paradise Lost in that everyone thinks he ought to like it, but still you don't notice too many people actually curling up with it.

There are worse things than being fat, and one of them is worrying about it all the time.

When I finally gathered, invented, stole, simplified, borrowed, and found a publisher for a clutch of reasonably foolproof recipes, I learned I had friends I hadn't known about - more proof that a mutual dislike can be quite as sound a basis for friendship as a mutual devotion.

Kitchens were different then, too - not only what came out of them, but their smells and sounds. A hot pie cooling smells different from a frozen pie thawing.

It isn't surprising that many children consider their parents to be a little dim, and that they sometimes try to update them. The fact that they don't usually try too hard is just as well; a thoroughly updated parent is an unappetizing sight.

Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?

Some people collect paperweights, or pre-Columbian figures, or old masters, or young mistresses, or tombstone rubbings, or five-minute recipes, or any of a thousand other things ... My own collection is sunrises; and I find that they have their advantages. Sunrises are usually handsome, they can't possibly be dusted, and they take only a little room, so long as it has a window to see them from.

As millions of women have done before me, I pulled domesticity over my head like a blanket and found I was still cold.

One of the loveliest things about being grown up is the knowledge that never again will I have to go through the miserable business of performing in Mrs. Smedley's Annual Piano Recital at McKinleyville's First Presbyterian Church.

This wild emaciated look appeals to some women, though not to many men, who are seldom seen pinning up a Vogue illustration in a machine shop.

You don't get over hating to cook, any more than you get over having big feet.

I recently adopted for my own a good motto I saw somewhere, on a barroom mirror or possibly a washroom wall: 'The time you enjoyed wasting wasn't wasted.' I think I'll have that printed some day on a T-shirt or the bedroom ceiling.

Many a restaurant seems to employ more copy writers than cooks.

Mothers always think you are working either too hard or not hard enough.

You may have noticed, as I have, that if ever you find yourself declaring emphatically and unequivocally that you will never do some one particular thing, chances are good that this is precisely what you will one day find yourself doing.

It isn't true, by the way, that nothing is as bad as you think it's going to be. Some things are exactly as bad as you thought they were going to be, and some things are worse.

The same fire that hardens the egg will melt the butter; and much depends on the personality type, whether you customarily rise to a challenge or whether you sink. For as long as I can remember, I have been a sinker. One challenge, and I drop like a rock.

Molded salads are best served in situations where they have little or no competition ... Like television, gelatin is too often a vehicle for limp leftovers that couldn't make it anywhere else.

Peas went with carrots as infallibly as ham went with eggs. For years I thought carrots and peas grew on the same vine.

A celebrity is someone who no longer does the things that made him a celebrity.

It is always a taut moment in a foreign country waiting to see if your English-speaking guide speaks English ...

The most all-around, practical, long-wearing illusions are the ones that you weave yourself.

I didn't learn for years that you generally find your Self after you quit looking for it.

Life is so very simple when you have no facts to confuse you.

There was something immensely comforting, I found, about a crumpet - so comforting that I've never forgotten about them and have even learned to make them myself against those times when I have no other source of supply.

Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.

But let me say this about learning experiences: they're weird. Or put it this way: what you learn from a learning experience is generally something else.

On their return from a trip, it is wise to see friends promptly, before they've had time to get their pictures developed.

Forgetting things is what gives old age a bad name, that and old age.

It's easier to find a traveling companion than to get rid of one.

People will admit to arson and mayhem sooner than no sense of humor.

Travel never made a bore interesting; it only makes for a well-traveled bore, in the same way coffee makes for a wide-awake drunk. In fact, the more a bore travels, the worse he gets. The only advantage in it for his friends and family is that he isn't home as much.

Facts must be faced. Vegetables simply don't taste as good as most other things do.

When you're little, time stretches obligingly, and vacation is forever.