1626 Cafe Quotes

We each took a cup as we passed and drank the sweet chilled beverage- it was refreshing and tasted like ginger ale with a swirl of summer peaches. Then Peaseblossom waved us through the open door.
"Wow," said Henry.
We stepped into an enchanted culinary forest. The walls had been painted to look like a thicket of trees, and the ceiling resembled the summer sky in the woods, complete with overhanging branches. There were topiaries and baskets overflowing with wildflowers. The tables were grouped to one side, still draped in their shimmering coverings. Dreamy music floated through the air, and piney, herby scents wafted on gentle currents. Butterflies flitted around and landed on people's heads and shoulders. And everywhere we looked, there were trays of baked goods- most of them, I realized, straight from the pages of Puffy Fay's cookbook. The pastry case and the counter near it were hidden behind curtains that looked like a wall of evergreens. ~ Rajani LaRocca

With any luck, Heaven itself will resemble a vast used bookstore, with a really good cafe in one corner, serving dark beer and kielbasa to keep up one's strength while browsing, and all around will be the kind of angels usually found in Victoria's Secret catalogs. ~ Michael Dirda

No one is as real to me as people in the novel. It grows like a living thing. When I realize they do not exist except in my mind I have a feeling of sadness, looking around for them, as if the half-empty cafe were a place I had once come to with friends who had all moved away. ~ Mavis Gallant

It was a pleasant cafe, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old water-proof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a cafe au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

From "Lunchtime At The Justice Cafe" :

The waitress snarled a grin that lasted just long enough to show a mouthful of stained yellowed teeth, then turned suddenly serious. "'Course I'm not the one to talk about these folks, I 'spose. You see, I used to do a bit of eavesdroppin' in my day before the sheriff put a stop to that." 

She lifted the stringy blond hair from the side of her face, the opposite side from where she had hidden her pencil. There was a small hole about the size of a quarter where her ear should have been. "As you can see, Mr. McAllister, Sheriff Sweet puts a fairly high price on mindin' your own business in Justice," she added, refilling his cup. "You want some pie?" ~ Kenneth C. Goldman

You get to where you kind of like it, and It's a habit That's hard to break. I still find myself sittin' in a cafe, like a pizza parlor. ~ Chris LeDoux

In the mid-1980s, on a spring Sunday morning, a Volvo stationwagon parked in Brunswick Street. A young couple got out. She was trim, blonded, tanned. He was already broadening in the midsection, sockless, short and hairy legs ending in boatshoes. From a restraining chair in the back seat, he unloaded a child, complaining, flailing. They took it into a cafe.

They were going to have brunch.

The old Brunswick Street was dead, Brunchwick Street born. There was no turning back. ~ Peter Temple

You're serious."
"As serious as an accountant at an IRS audit."
His face closed off, reminding her of the ruthlessness she had first noticed about him on the front steps. "You have no business opening a restaurant."
"Says who?"
"Says the guy who watched you try to extricate yourself from a burger suit with a knife."
Her mouth fell open. "Burger suits and restaurants are two different kettles of fish."
"Kettles of fish? Now there's great business terminology."
"Yep, Texas style."
"You're in New York, sweetheart."
"I am not your sweetheart, thank my lucky stars."
"Another of your quaint Texas sayings? What was the last one I heard you use? 'Bless your heart'?"
She sliced him a tooth-grinding smile. "While you might not like them, you can bet your backside that a cafe that serves the kind of fare we create in Texas would have people lined up around the corner. Or, as we say in Texas, till the cows come home. ~ Linda Francis Lee

I found another girl to pose for Myrto and then I didn't think about Rafaela much, not until a spring day years later. Or rather, I thought about her with an occasional, impersonal pang. Have you ever had a favorite cafe close? It was like that. ~ Ellis Avery

Art, literature, and philosophy are attempts to found the world anew on a human freedom: that of the creator; to foster such an aim, one must first unequivocally posit oneself as a freedom. The restrictions that education and custom impose on a woman limit her grasp of the universe...Indeed, for one to become a creator, it is not enough to be cultivated, that is, to make going to shows and meeting people part of one's life; culture must be apprehended through the free movement of a transcendence; the spirit with all its riches must project itself in an empty sky that is its to fill; but if a thousand fine bonds tie it to the earth, its surge is broken. The girl today can certainly go out alone, stroll in the Tuileries; but I have already said how hostile the street is: eyes everywhere, hands waiting: if she wanders absentmindedly, her thoughts elsewhere, if she lights a cigarette in a cafe, if she goes to the cinema alone, an unpleasant incident can quickly occur; she must inspire respect by the way she dresses and behaves: this concern rivets her to the ground and self. "Her wings are clipped." At eighteen, T.E. Lawrence went on a grand tour through France by bicycle; a young girl would never be permitted to take on such an adventure...Yet such experiences have an inestimable impact: this is how an individual in the headiness of freedom and discovery learns to look at the entire world as his fief...[The girl] may feel alone within the world: she never stands up in front of i ~ Simone De Beauvoir

The power of literature, I've always thought, lies in how willful the act of making it is. As such, I've never bought into the idea that the writer requires any special ritual in order to write. If need be, I could write almost anywhere, as easily in an ashram as in a crowded cafe, or so I've always insisted when asked whether I write with a pen or a computer, at morning or night, alone or surrounded, in a saddle like Goethe, standing like Hemingway, lying down like Twain, and so on, as if there were a secret to it all that might spring the lock of the safe housing the novel, fully formed and ready for publication, apparently suspended in each of us. ~ Nicole Krauss

Some people won't dog-ear the pages. Others won't place the book facedown, pages splayed. Some won't dare make a mark in the margin. Get over it. Books exist to impart their worlds to you, not to be beautiful objects to save for some other day. We implore you to fold, crack, and scribble on your books whenever the desire takes you. Underline the good bits, exclaim "YES!" and "NO!" in the margins. Invite others to inscribe and date the frontispiece. Draw pictures, jot down phone numbers and Web addresses, make journal entries, draft letters to friends or world leaders. Scribble down ideas for a novel of your own, sketch bridges you want to build, dresses you want to design. Stick postcards and pressed flowers between the pages.

When next you open the book, you'll be able to find the bits that made you think, laugh, and cry the first time around. And you'll remember that you picked up that coffee stain in the cafe where you also picked up that handsome waiter. Favorite books should be naked, faded, torn, their pages spilling out. Love them like a friend, or at least a favorite toy. Let them wrinkle and age along with you. ~ Ella Berthoud & Susan Elderkin

Do not think that enlightenment is going to make you special, it's not. If you feel special in any way, then enlightenment has not occurred. I meet a lot of people who think they are enlightened and awake simply because they have had a very moving spiritual experience. They wear their enlightenment on their sleeve like a badge of honor. They sit among friends and talk about how awake they are while sipping coffee at a cafe. The funny thing about enlightenment is that when it is authentic, there is no one to claim it. Enlightenment is very ordinary; it is nothing special. Rather than making you more special, it is going to make you less special. It plants you right in the center of a wonderful humility and innocence. Everyone else may or may not call you enlightened, but when you are enlightened the whole notion of enlightenment and someone who is enlightened is a big joke. I use the word enlightenment all the time; not to point you toward it but to point you beyond it. Do not get stuck in enlightenment. ~ Adyashanti

Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace'
One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.
One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.
One fine day. ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I hate solitude, but I'm afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself. ~ Iris Murdoch

I grip the edge of a sidewalk cafe table to keep from falling. The diners stare in alarm, but I don't care. I'm reeling, and I gasp for air. How can I have been so stupid? How could I have ever for a moment believed I wasn't in love with him? ~ Stephanie Perkins

Cafe De Flore speaks of love, its joys, its pains and its dramas - to love and to lose. This story upset me, I was upside-down, in the depths of myself. ~ Vanessa Paradis

These were the rains that drove people close to the walls, under the balconies, or sent them dashing madly through the squares, and drenched the fluttering ribbons and bright trappings of the horses so that their flanks were streaked with delicate watercolors. The storms washed the streets so that little streams of brown water went roaring along the gutters toward the sea, and thundered on the roofs of the cafés where people were crowded together laughing in the steam and half darkness. I loved those rains; they were of the sort that is welcomed by everyone, preceded by hot, oppressive hours of stillness; they came the way storms come in the islands but did not last as long, and often the sun came out when they had passed. I was happy whenever the rain caught me walking about in the streets, for then I would rush into the nearest café, along with all the others who were escaping from the weather, all of us crushing laughing through the doors. The rain allowed me to go anywhere, to form quick, casual friendships, forced to share one of the overcrowded tables, among the beaming waiters who pushed good-naturedly through the throngs carrying cups of steaming apple cider. ~ Sofia Samatar

The front of the cafe was all open glass, and the seating was arranged so that wherever you sat you faced the beach, as if you were there to watch the sea perform a show. As Jane looked around her, she felt that dissatisfied feeling she often experienced when she was somewhere new and lovely. She couldn't quite articulate it except with the words "If only I were here". This little beachside cafe was so exquisite, she longed to really be there
except, of course, she was there, so it didn't make any sense. ~ Liane Moriarty

On my tombstone they will carve, IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

If I die in a cafe with a good book, then I died a happy man". ~ Bruce Washburn

Sure, once I published a piece or once I closed my notebook and left the cafe or stopped daydreaming, I was scared again, but while I was writing, while I was telling the truth, I was unafraid. I wanted that again. Fearless-ish. Afraid and not afraid. Scared and doing it anyway. Holding more than one thing. Two things at once. ~ Jennifer Pastiloff

The card for the Santa Teresa cybercafe was a deepred, so red that it was hard to read what was printed on it. On the back, in a lighter red, was a map that showed exactly where the cafe was located. He asked the receptionist to translate the name of the place. The clerk laughed and said it was called Fire, Walk With Me. ~ Roberto Bolano

'Bagdad Cafe' was a film that changed many, many people's lives ... how they saw themselves and how they looked at their life situation. I thought I made a little movie. All the mail that I get is about how it changed lives, and that's wonderful. ~ C. C. H. Pounder

We always knew how to honor fallen soldiers. They were killed for our sake, they went out on our mission. But how are we to mourn a random man killed in a terrorist attack while sitting in a cafe? How do you mourn a housewife who got on a bus and never returned? ~ A. B. Yehoshua

After his initial homecoming week, after he'd been taken to a bunch of sights by his cousins, after he'd gotten somewhat used to the scorching weather and the surprise of waking up to the roosters and being called Huascar by everybody (that was his Dominican name, something else he'd forgotten), after he refused to succumb to that whisper that all long-term immigrants carry inside themselves, the whisper that says You do not belong, after he'd gone to about fifty clubs and because he couldn't dance salsa, merengue, or bachata had sat and drunk Presidentes while Lola and his cousins burned holes in the floor, after he'd explained to people a hundred times that he'd been separated from his sister at birth, after he spent a couple of quiet mornings on his own, writing, after he'd given out all his taxi money to beggars and had to call his cousin Pedro Pablo to pick him up, after he'd watched shirtless shoeless seven-year-olds fighting each other for the scraps he'd left on his plate at an outdoor cafe, after his mother took them all to dinner in the Zona Colonial and the waiters kept looking at their party askance (Watch out, Mom, Lola said, they probably think you're Haitian - La unica haitiana aqui eres tu, mi amor, she retorted), after a skeletal vieja grabbed both his hands and begged him for a penny, after his sister had said, You think that's bad, you should see the bateys, after he'd spent a day in Bani (the camp where La Inca had been raised) and he'd taken a dump in a l ~ Junot Diaz

I considered myself very lucky after 'Baghdad Cafe,' and I have 'The Shield.' In every genre, I've kicked butt at some point. I'm real happy. ~ C. C. H. Pounder

I opened Union Square Cafe when I was just 27 years old, and my first hope was simply that it would stay in business. My higher hope was that in its lifetime, it might grow to play an essential role in the lives of its stakeholders. ~ Danny Meyer

The cafe door opened. A young man in dusty white leathers entered, and the wind blew in empty crisp packets and newspapers and ice cream wrappers in with him. They danced around his feet like excited children, then fell exhausted to the floor. ~ Neil Gaiman

The continent has embraced a spiritual death long before the demographic one. In those seventeen European countries that have fallen into the "lowest-low fertility," where are the children? In a way, you're looking at them: the guy sipping espresso at a sidewalk cafe listening to his iPod, the eternal adolescent charges of the paternalistic state. The government makes the grown-up decisions and we spend our pocket money on our record collection...the long-term cost of welfare is the infantilization of the population. The populations of wealthy democratic societies expect to have total choice over their satellite TV package, yet think it perfectly normal to allow the state to make all the choices in respect of their health care. It's a curious inversion of citizenship to demand control over peripheral leisure activities but to contract out the big life-changing stuff to the government. And it's hard to come up with a wake-up call for a society as dedicated as latter-day Europe to the belief that life is about sleeping in. ~ Mark Steyn

The man sitting across from me at the cafe was thinking about murdering his wife.
He imagined stabbing her and pretending like it was a robbery. Or perhaps, he thought, he'd take her hiking, push her off a cliff and say it was an accident; that she'd slipped. I wanted to tell him it wouldn't work, that in those CSI shows on T.V. they always suspected the husband first. ~ Lori Brighton

My mum and dad ran a family cafe in Sligo for 35 years and worked long hours. We grew up in a very hard-working family and had a lovely atmosphere, as we lived above the restaurant. It definitely made me want to work hard, whatever I chose to do. As the baby of seven kids, I was definitely a bit spoilt. ~ Shane Filan

But we must take other steps, such as increasing conservation, developing an ethanol industry, and increasing CAFE standards if we are to make our country safer by cutting our reliance on foreign oil. ~ Jim Costa

Readers will easily recognize the cover of a book they've read, but in a cafe that man over there, is that ... is that ... well, it's hard to tell - doesn't he have long hair? - oh, he's gone. ~ Yann Martel

I want to watch it again tonight even though I know I won't have enough time to masturbate over the scene where the woman is getting drilled to death by a power drill since I have a date with Courtney at seven-thirty at Cafe Luxembourg. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Travel Tip: Relax. It's not a crime to want to sit in a cafe and not take a walking our of all those historic monuments in your peripheral vision. ~ Vivian Swift

Moammar Gadhafi is the man that killed those Americans over Lockerbie, Scotland. Moammar Gadhafi is also the man that bombed that cafe in Berlin and killed those Marines. And you want to know why Moammar Gadhafi started cooperating on his nuclear program? Because we got rid of Saddam Hussein. And so he got scared that he would be next, and that's why he started cooperating. ~ Marco Rubio

I don't really have an office or anything, and I like to have to move location every two hours. So I just kind of write in a park, on a bench, in the library, in a cafe, back to the library, that kind of thing. ~ Steve Toltz

It's a small town; everybody eats in the same cafe; everybody gets their hair cut in the same barber shop. That kind of community building, I think, begins to bridge those gaps. ~ Joe Thompson

The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city. ~ Tahir Shah

Remember the first time you ever came? Tell the truth. You were dreading it."
His brown eyes laughed warmly. "What wasn't to dread? A godforsaken island in the middle of the Atlantic-"
"It's only eleven miles out."
"Same difference. If it didn't have a hospital, it wasn't on my radar screen."
"You thought there'd be dirt roads and nothing to do."
He gave a wry chuckle. Between lobstering, clamming, and sailing, then movie nights at the church and mornings at the cafe, not to mention dinners at home, in town, or at the homes of friends, Nicole had kept him busy.
"You loved it," she dared.
"I did," he admitted. "It was perfect. A world away. ~ Barbara Delinsky

The bistro was his secret weapon in tracking down murderers. Not just in Three Pines, but in every town and village in Quebec. First he found a comfortable café or brasserie, or bistro, then he found the murderer. Because Armand Gamache knew something many of his colleagues never figured out. Murder was deeply human, the murdered and the murderer. To describe the murderer as a monstrosity, a grotesque, was to give him an unfair advantage. No. Murderers were human, and at the root of each murder was an emotion. Warped, no doubt. Twisted and ugly. But an emotion. And one so powerful it had driven a man to make a ghost.

Gamache's job was to collect the evidence, but also to collect the emotions. And the only way he knew to do that was do get to know the people. To watch and listen. To pay attention, and the best way to do that was in a deceptively casual way in a deceptively casual setting.

Like the bistro. ~ Louise Penny

One of my regrets would be that I will never again have the pleasure of sneaking into a cafe, any cafe I like, sitting down and diving into my world and no one knowing what I am doing and no one bothering about me and being totally anonymous, that was fantastic ~ J.K. Rowling

At the railroad station he noted that he still had thirty minutes. He quickly recalled that in a cafe on the Calle Brazil (a few dozen feet from Yrigoyen's house) there was an enormous cat which allowed itself to be caressed as if it were a disdainful divinity. He entered the cafe. There was the cat, asleep. He ordered a cup of coffee, slowly stirred the sugar, sipped it (this pleasure had been denied him in the clinic), and thought, as he smoothed the cat's black coat, that this contact was an illusion and that the two beings, man and cat, were as good as separated by a glass, for man lives in time, in succession, while the magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

There are lots of young vital playwrights who are experimenting, and these are the plays that people who are interested in the theatre should see. They should go off Broadway. They should go to the cafe theatres and see the experiments that are being made. ~ Edward Albee

As soon as I put my uniform on, the rest of my life solidified around me like a plaster cast. From that moment on, my friends were anyone who could put up with the disgrace; my occupation, any job from which I was not given the sack; my playground, any cafe or restaurant from which I was not barred or any street corner from which the police did not move me on. ~ Quentin Crisp

I watched him walk back to the cafe holding his paper. I rather liked him and evidently she led him quite a life. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

After he graduated from college, he went to Paris and became an Existentialist. He had a photograph taken of Existentialism and himself sitting at a sidewalk cafe. Pard was wearing a beard and he looked as if he had a huge soul, with barely enough room in his body to contain it. ~ Richard Brautigan

I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn't know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon