Gervasoni Dining Quotes

Whenever Elliot Norther's wife was nervous she baked. With the murder of Harriet Mason, her husband's close colleague at the Faculty, she had been unable to resist a couple of Victoria sponges. During the frenzied press speculation about the identity of the murderer, a Dundee cake had appeared, followed swiftly by a Battenberg and a Lemon Drizzle. Since news of the Wildencrust murder broke, the kitchen, dining room and study had come to resemble the storerooms of an industrial bakery, every surface heaving with the weight of sponge and cream. Yesterday, having at last been overwhelmed by the fear and rumour that swept the town, she had taken herself off to her mother's house in Hampstead, leaving her husband to soldier on alone. When he had last seen his wife, Elliot Norther noticed that she had been putting the finishing touches to an impressive, triple-tiered wedding cake, beating a batch of royal icing into a sickly paste. ~ Robert Clear

The world is going to turn upside down in a way that the honest man will live uncomfortably -- while the dishonest man will live very comfortably. Pay attention to the windows of the Four Seasons next time you stroll by their dining room. You will find thugs and hustlers of every creed living like true kings and queens. ~ Suzy Kassem

Neighborhood folk still came, in small vanquished numbers and mostly in the afternoon, before the two small dining rooms and the bar were taken over by the educated classes, an ill-dressed, underfed, overdrunken group of squatters with minds so highly developed that they were excused from good manners, tastes so refined in one direction that they were excused for having none in any other, emotions so cultivated that the only aberration was normality, all afloat here on sodden pools of depravity calculated only to manifest the pricelessness of what they were throwing away, the three sexes in two colors, a group of people all mentally and physically the wrong size. ~ William Gaddis

Remembering his creative exposition on the subject of purple-spotted dingy-dippers, Lillian gave a little huff of amusement. She had always considered Westcliff an utterly humorless man…and in that, she had misjudged him. "I thought you never lied," she said.
His lips twitched. "Given the options of seeing you become ill at the dinner table, or lying to get you out of there quickly, I chose the lesser of two evils. Do you feel better now?"
"Better…yes." Lillian realized that she was resting in the crook of his arm, her skirts draped partially over one of his thighs. His body was solid and warm, perfectly matched to hers. Glancing downward, she saw that the fabric of his trousers had molded firmly around his muscular thighs. Unladylike curiosity awakened inside her, and she clenched her fingers against the urge to slide her palm over his leg. "The part about the dingy-dipper was clever," she said, dragging her gaze up to his face. "But inventing a Latin name for it was positively inspired."
Westcliff grinned. "I always hoped my Latin would be good for something." Shifting her a little, he reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and glanced at his watch. "We'll return to the dining hall in approximately a quarter hour. By that time the calves' heads should be removed."
Lillian made a face. "I hate English food," she exclaimed. "All those jellies and blobs, and wiggly puddings, and the game that is aged until by the time it's served, it is older than I am ~ Lisa Kleypas

Yet while Owllwin was arrogant, he was also humble enough to admit when he had made a mistake. Perhaps it was his sheer clumsiness that kept him so humble: the first time he spoke to Cricket was in the great dining hall, and he brought down six tables five minutes after. ~ Ash Gray

Yeah," I said. "I think you're jealous."
"Of what?"
"That I can pass and you can't."
He opened his mouth and emotions flowed over his face like water; anger, humor, denial. He finally settled on a smile, but it wasn't a happy one. "You really are a bitch, aren't you?"
I nodded. "You don't pull on my chain and I won't pull on yours."
"Deal," he said. The smile flashed wider. "Now, allow me to escort your lily white ass to the dining room."
I shook my head. "Lead on, tall, dark, and studly, as long as I get to watch your ass while we walk down the hall."
"Only if you promise to tell me how you like the view."
I widened my eyes. "You mean give you a critique on your butt?"
He nodded and the smile looked happy now.
"Are you this big an egotist or just trying to embarrass me?"
"Guess."
"Both," I said.
The smile spread to a grin. "You are as smart as you look. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

It's Will," she said. "He's being absolutely ridiculous in the dining room."
Charlotte looked puzzled. "How is this different from him being totally ridiculous in the library or the weapons room or any of the other places he's usually ridiculous? ~ Cassandra Clare

I didn't know what to say. I knew I had a big choice to make. I could let it all go and try to love him, try to trust him, try to make something lasting and good. He obviously had strong feelings for me or about me. And he wasn't being so bad right now. We could build something sturdy, beautiful. Or I could try to make a dash for the door by crawling under the dining room table.

There was a good chance that he would kill me later either way. ~ Alexandra Kleeman

An amusing writer of the last century, justly complains of the want of definite words to express, distinctly and unmistakably, the different degrees of visits, with reference to their length. Whether the stay of the guest comprises ten minutes, an hour, an evening, a day, a week, or a month, still it goes under the vague and general term of a visit.

We propose, humourously, that if the stay of the guest exceeds a week, it should be called a 'visitation.' If it includes a dining, or a tea-drinking, or evening-spending, it may be terms 'a visit;' while a mere call can be mentioned as 'a vis. ~ Eliza Leslie

There was scarcely a woman alive, it seemed, who could resist the urge to haul men down onto beds, car seats, kitchen floors, dining-room tables, park grass, parlor sofas, or packing crates, entwine warm thighs around them, and pant in ecstasy. ~ Russell Baker

Some people make friends by wining and dining people with the sole objective of doing business with them. Once the usefulness goes, the friendship also goes. It is unfortunate because it is very shortsighted and insincere. One should keep in mind that just because a person is a friend it does not mean they are under an obligation to buy from you. In my career, I have acquired clients professionally and built friendships later, versus making friends with the intention of doing business. Sooner or later, people uncover the ulterior motive. ~ Shiv Khera

Gwen smiled and asked hopefully, "Is there coffee again this morning?"
Silvan put his book down and glanced absently at Gwen. His gaze dropped to her cleavage, and a single white brow shot up. He blinked several times.
"There certainly is," Nell said, circling the table.
She stopped behind Gwen and draped a linen cloth over her shoulders, so it tumbled from her neck like a bib.
"Peel yer eyes off the lass's breasts," Nell said sweetly to Silvan.

Gwen turned twenty shades of red, sneaked a hand beneath the bib, and tugged at her bodice, trying to jiggle them back down a little. Mortified, she devoted her attention to eyeing the medieval dining ware-plates and goblets made of heavy silver, a fat spoon and broad knife, and heavy blue bowls.

"She's the one who fluffed them up," Silvan protested indignantly. "I didn't mean to look, but they were ... so ... there. Like trying not to see the sun in the sky."
Nell arched a brow and circled round the table again.
"I hardly think 'twas ye she fluffed 'em for, was it lass?" Gwen glanced up and gave an embarrassed shake of her head. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs, a very endearing sight, I'm sure you'll agree. And even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen. Mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior. ~ Terry Pratchett

Laurie piped up again. 'At State, everybody calls diversity dispersity. What happens is, everybody has their own clubs, their own signs, their own sections where they all sit in the dining hall--all the African Americans are over there? . . . and all the Asians sit over't these other tables? -- except for the Koreans? -- because they don't get along with the Japanese so they sit way over there? Everybody's dispersed into their own little groups -- and everybody's told to distrust everybody else? Everybody's told that everybody else is trying to screw them over--oops!' -- Laurie pulled a face and put her fingertips over her lips -- 'I'm sorry!' She rolled eyes and smiled. 'Anyway, the idea is, every other group is like prejudiced against your group, and no matter what they say, they're only out to take advantage of you, and you should have nothing to do with them -- unless your white, in which case all the others are not prejudiced against you, they're like totally right, because you really are a racist and everything, even if you don't know it? Everybody ends up dispersed into their own like turtle shells, suspicious of everybody else and being careful not to fraternize with them. Is it like that at Dupont? ~ Tom Wolfe

Herding them all toward the basement, their father paused at the dining-room window, pulled back the curtain and shone the beam through the window and out into the darkness until it caught the yawning base of the doomed tree. After only a quick glimpse, a glimpse that was like a gulp of foul air, Jacob pulled at his mother's hand to draw her to safety. But Michael lingered, and even Annie squirmed out of her father's arms to stand by the window, her two hands on the painted sill. The roots reared out of the black ground, the trunk leaned and then straightened, the long branches swung this way and that. Their mother patted Jacob's hand to soothe him. On their way through the kitchen she took a bottle of milk from the refrigerator and the remaining paper cups from their picnic. They followed their father's flashlight down the wooden steps. It was a tunnel of light and it seemed to draw ~ Alice McDermott

While There may be power in forgiveness, there is even more power in lobbing a Molotov cocktail through someone's dining room window. ~ Jim Norton

But as they settled into their seats in the inn's busy dining room, he looked at her across the table and it wasn't her beauty he saw. It was her heart. And her soul. And he had a sinking feeling that his life was never going to be the same. ~ Julia Quinn

A brick could be used to brighten up your day, like a lampshade over the sun dangling down over your dining room table. You'd better apply sunscreen to your ice cream or it'll likely melt in your bedpan. ~ Jarod Kintz

In the Members' Dining Room, the Conservatives eat at one end, the Labour Party at the other, while the Liberals wait at table. ~ Gyles Brandreth

My brain instantly traveled back to my parents' dining room table. I'd sat there every morning with my brain-storming notebook - my father's idea - and I would do my homework or write song lyrics or journal on something I'd seen on the news. That was back when I'd been sure I was going to change the world. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Moomintroll's mother and father always welcomed all their friends in the same quiet way, just adding another bed and putting another leaf in the dining-room table. And so Moominhouse was rather full
a place where everyone did what they liked and seldom worried about tomorrow. Very often unexpected and disturbing things used to happen, but nobody ever had time to be bored, and that is always a good thing. ~ Tove Jansson

Nor were the intellectuals of the 1920s a vanguard of a new outlook, as they themselves supposed, but the exhausted rearguard of Victorian romanticism. They sought refuge from an industrialised and ugly world. Some, like Virginia Woolf, found it in polishing up an exquisite sensibility. Others, like her husband Leonard Woolf and of course Gilbert Murray, found escape in designing an ideal society...It was a sheltered world, this of the intelligentsia of the 1920s, its inhabitants mostly shielded by private means from crude personal reminders of the outside struggle for survival. They circulated at leisure from country house to country cottage...back again to Bloomsbury or one of the ancient universities; convinced that they carried in their luggage the soul of civilisation. The memoirs of the epoch are fragrant with cultured weekends - witty chat on the lawn and brilliant profundity at the dining table. It was a circle of flimsy and precious people, of whom Lady Ottoline Morrell was perhaps the manliest. And so, while not all intellectuals were active pacifists or internationalists, they were generally more concerned with classical French and Greek culture - 'the good life' - than with 'Philistine' matters like industrial and strategic power. ~ Correlli Barnett

When our boulevards are lined with an infinity of bad eating houses filled with dead-faced people placed like mute beasts in their stalls; today, when one out of every three marriages ends in divorce ... It seems incredible that normal human beings not only tolerate the average American restaurant food, but actually prefer it to eating at home. The only possible explanation for such deliberate mass-poisoning, a kind of suicide of the spirit as well as the body, is that meals in the intimacy of a family dining-room or kitchen are unbearable. ~ Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

Dining and marriage restrictions stunt Hindu society. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Even if all philosophers do eat, some may eat more than others. This situation is called "lack of fairness". Or life. ~ Dennis E. Shasha

Shall we return to the dining room?" Anthony queried. "I imagine you're hungry, and if we tarry much
longer, Colin is sure to
have eaten our host out of house and home."
Eloise nodded. "Either that, or they've all killed him by now."
Anthony paused to consider that. "It would save me the expense of a wedding."
"Anthony!"
"It's a joke, Eloise," he said, giving his head a weary shake. "Come along, now. Let's make sure your Sir
Phillip still resides
among the ranks of the living. ~ Julia Quinn

Personal sympathy has helped me on very much. My husband from first to last has watched every picture with delight, and it is my daily habit to run to him with every glass upon which a fresh glory is newly stamped, and to listen to his enthusiastic applause. This habit of running into the dining-room with my wet pictures has stained such an immense quantity of table linen with nitrate of silver, indelible stains, that I should have been banished from any less indulgent household. ~ Julia Margaret Cameron

Think you're not an artist? Of course you are! Everyone has something special to offer. Go for it! Creative expression is what makes a meal, in a word, Beautiful. Go ahead and find your creative voice in food and feel the power it has to transform your dining experience. ~ Julie Piatt

The longer people extend their colonnades, the higher they build their towers, the wider they stretch their walks, the deeper they dig their summer grottoes, the more massively they raise the roofs of their dining-halls, so much the more will there be to cut off the sight of heaven. ~ Seneca.

I think fine dining should be part of the community where it is, more than just for the people who are going to make a special occasion. ~ Daniel Boulud

There is so much ignorant prejudice against bees in a dining-room. ~ Patrick O'Brian

The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abbe of Simore, who had been Bishop of D - in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air, - the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince ~ Victor Hugo

You didn't 'instruct' me to stay," Ceony countered. "Just to leave the dining room. Which I did."
Mg. Aviosky rubbed the bridge of her nose under her glasses. "This feels very much like detention again, Ceony. ~ Charlie N. Holmberg

Sal and Henry return with a gust of warm garden air and I settle down to create miniature roses from sugarpaste using tiny ivory spatulas and crimpers. I will have no antique tester bed crowning my cake, only a posy of flowers: symbols of beauty and growth, each year new-blossoming. I let Henry paint the broken pieces with spinach juice, while I tint my flowers with cochineal and yellow gum. As a pretty device I paint a ladybird on a rose, and think it finer than Sèvres porcelain.
At ten o'clock tomorrow, I will marry John Francis at St. Mark's Church, across the square. As Sal and I rehearse our plans for the day, pleasurable anticipation bubbles inside me like fizzing wine. We will return from church for this bride cake in the parlor, then take a simple wedding breakfast of hot buttered rolls, ham, cold chicken, and fruit, on the silver in the dining room. Nan has sent me a Yorkshire Game Pie, so crusted with wedding figures of wheatsheafs and blossoms it truly looks too good to eat. We have invited few guests, for I want no great show, and instead will have bread and beef sent to feed the poor. And at two o'clock, we will leave with Henry for a much anticipated holiday by the sea, at Sandhills, on the southern coast. John Francis has promised Henry he might try sea-bathing, while I have bought stocks of cerulean blue and burnt umber to attempt to catch the sea and sky in watercolor. ~ Martine Bailey

I wanted everything to freeze, it was finally where I wanted it, and I whispered to my empty dining room, "Nobody move." Timothy was healthy, my dad was still sober, I had good friends, I was in love, my work as a counselor was so rewarding, but above all of that, I had a drag queen who strutted through my life, always at just the right time, teaching me that there is glitter in the darkness if only you remember to look in the right places. (265) ~ Wendy Blackburn

Celebrity chefs are the leaders in the field of food, and we are the led. Why should the leaders of chemical businesses be held responsible for polluting the marine environment with a few grams of effluent, which is sublethal to marine species, while celebrity chefs are turning out endangered fish at several dozen tables a night without enduring a syllable of criticism? ~ Charles Clover

Ah, you Americans. A hundred different churches and one kind of gravy. ~ German Cook In The Seminary Dining Room

In a policy shift which the historian Guy de la Bedoyere has compared with Western Imperialism, the Romans converted militant Britons to their way of life with consumer entincements, introducing them to the urbane pleasures of hot spas and fine dining, encouraging them to wear togas and speak Latin. ~ Catharine Arnold

Principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble. ~ Victor Hugo

We may now understand better, too, why my father was so fond of the story of the butler who failed to panic on discovering a tiger under the dining table; it was because he knew instinctively that somewhere in this story lay the kernel of what true 'dignity' is. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

They moved from the drawing room to a dining room on the ground floor where they found spiders large as saucers lurking in the dresser (Ron left the room hurriedly to make a cup of tea and did not return for an hour and a half) ~ J.K. Rowling

Good looking? Check. Brilliant? Check. Rich? Check. Possible sociopath? Double check. Great. I was dining with Ted Bundy. ~ Rachel Van Dyken