Julie Powell Quotes

When I got home I peered down at the lobster to see how he was doing. The inner plastic bag was sucked tight around him and clouded up. It looked like something out of an eighties made-for-TV movie, with some washed-up actress taking too many pills and trying to off herself with a Macy's bag. ~ Julie Powell

But hard bitten cynicism leaves one feeling peevish, and too much of it can do lasting damage to your heart. ~ Julie Powell

Like the muscles knew from the beginning that it would end with this, this inevitable falling apart ... It's sad, but a relief as well to know that two things so closely bound together can separate with so little violence, leaving smooth surfaces instead of bloody shreds. ~ Julie Powell

It's all about the "French Paradox," that much-publicized puzzle of how French people eat all that fatty food and drink tons of wine, yet still manage to be svelte and sophisticated, not to mention cheese-eating surrender monkeys. ~ Julie Powell

But the not-very-highbrow truth of the matter was that the reading was how I got my ya-yas out.
For the sake of my bookish reputation I upgraded to Tolstoy and Steinbeck before I understood them, but my dark secret was that really, I preferred the junk. The Dragonriders of Pern, Flowers in the Attic, The Clan of the Cave Bear. This stuff was like my stash of Playboys under the mattress. ~ Julie Powell

Doors are going to open-doors you can't even imagine exist. ~ Julie Powell

Rognons de Veau à la Bordelaise is simplicity itself to make; no different, essentially, from Poulet Sauté, and no different, especially, from Bifteck Sauté Bercy. In fact, making it that night felt like falling into a time warp- I stood before the stove, melting butter and browning meat and smelling the smells of wine deglazing and shallots softening- but the dishes changed before my eyes, and I heard Julia warbling, "Boeuf Bourguignon is the same as Coq au Vin. You can use lamb, you can use veal, you can use pork.... ~ Julie Powell

It did not seem possible, much as he craved the comfort of a woman of intelligence, of humor and balance and perception. ~ Julie Powell

The road to hell is paved with leeks and potatoes ~ Julie Powell

How much more interior can you get, after all, than the interior of bones? It's the center of the center of things. If marrow were a geological formation, it would be magma roiling under the earth's mantle. If it were a plant, it would be a delicate moss that grows only in the highest crags of Mount Everest, blooming with tiny white flowers for three days in the Nepalese spring. If it were a memory, it would be your first one, your most painful and repressed one, the one that has made you who you are. ~ Julie Powell

Maybe if the men in my life weren't always making smart-ass comments, they wouldn't have to worry about bruises so much. ~ Julie Powell

I have never looked to religion for comfort - belief is just not in my genes. But reading Mastering the Art of French Cooking - childishly simple and dauntingly complex, incantatory and comforting - I thought this was what prayer must feel like. Sustenance bound up with anticipation and want. Reading MtAoFC was like reading pornographic Bible verses. ~ Julie Powell

One theory on cannibals, of course, is that they eat parts of their slain enemies to benefit from that person's greatest assets - their strength, their courage. Then there's that thing they do in Germany. You heard about that, didn't you? Some man over there agreed to let another man cut off his penis, cook it, then feed it to him – now, what in hell was that all about? What did he think the taste of his stir-fried cock would tell him about himself? Was he seeking to wring one last drop of pleasure out of the thing? (Goodness, that's an unnecessarily vivid metaphor.) But somehow – I said this over dinner – this steak with beef marrow sauce, it didn't seem that different. "It's like eating life. It's almost like eating my own life, you know?"

No, not really. But it's a hell of a good steak, sis. ~ Julie Powell

I began to ponder; this life we had for ourselves, Eric and I, it felt like the opposite of Potage Parmentier. It was easy enough to keep on with the soul-sucking jobs; at least it saved having to make a choice. But how much longer could I take such an easy life? Quicksand was easy. Hell, death was easy. Maybe that's why my synapses had started snapping at the sight of potatoes and leeks in the Korean deli. Maybe that was what was plucking deep down in my belly whenever I thought of Julia Child's book. Maybe I needed to make like a potato, winnow myself down, be a part of something that was not easy, just simple. ~ Julie Powell

If Daisy Buchanan's laugh is the sound of money, then a gimlet, well executed, is the color of it. It is just the thing when you are feeling impoverished, financially or spiritually. ~ Julie Powell

People want to care about people. People look after each other, given the chance ... I believe just believing in goodness generates a tiny bit of the stuff, so that being so foolish as to believe in our better natures, if just for a day, we actually contribute to the sum total of generosity in the universe. ~ Julie Powell

Unfortunately, Martha's recipes, though suitably complex, fall a tad short if you're looking for aphrodisiac cooking, perhaps only because everything about a Martha recipe, from the font it's printed in to the call for sanding sugar, with appended notes on where to find such a thing, simply screams Martha. ~ Julie Powell

It was 10:30 in the morning and I was already running behind. This is hardly unusual, but it pisses me off every single time. ~ Julie Powell

I love that after a day when nothing is sure, and when I say 'nothing' I mean nothing, you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. It's such a comfort. ~ Julie Powell

So the end may be a long time coming, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a way of sneaking up on you. ~ Julie Powell

The crunch of the mustard-spiked crust somehow brings the unctuous smooth richness of the liver into sharp relief. It's like the silky soul of steak. You have to close your eyes, let the meat melt on your tongue, into your corpuscles. ~ Julie Powell

The blog is certainly another tool for writers out there to break their way in. But being a blogger does not make you a great writer. ~ Julie Powell

I never really even tried. But if I'm not a New York actress, what am I? I'm a person who takes a subway from the outer boroughs to lower Manhattan office every morning, who spends her days answering phones and doing copying, who is too disconsolate when she gets back to her apartment at night to do anything but sit on the couch and stare vacantly at reality TV shows until she falls asleep. Oh Godm it really was true, wasn't it? I really was a secretary. ~ Julie Powell

Sometimes, if you want to be happy, you've got to run away to Bath and marry a punk rocker. Sometimes you've got to dye your hair cobalt blue, or wander remote islands in Sicily, or cook your way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, for no very good reason. ~ Julie Powell

There are times with your friends when you just have to put their whole mess out of your mind for a while. ~ Julie Powell

Fiddling with damp tarragon left me so intensely irritated that when I was done I had to stick the ramekin/mise en place bowls back in the fridge and go watch both the episode where Xander is possessed by a demon and the one where Giles regresses to his outrageously sexy teen self and has sex with Buffy's mom, just to get over it. ~ Julie Powell

I didn't understand for a long time, but what attracted me to MtAoFC [Mastering the Art of French Cooking] was the deeply buried aroma of hope and discovery of fulfillment in it. I thought I was using the Book to learn to cook French food, but really I was learning to sniff out the secret doors of possibility. ~ Julie Powell

My brother wrote another refrigerator magnet poem, when he was probably nineteen or twenty: 'When the flood comes/ I will swim to a symphony/ go by boat to some picture show/ and maybe I will forget about you.' How did he know way, way back then? How is it I know only now? ~ Julie Powell

The thing you learn with Potage Parmentier is that "simple" is not exactly the same as easy. ~ Julie Powell

Everyone knows there are foods that are sexy to eat. What they don't talk about so much is foods that are sexy to make. ~ Julie Powell

And I realized that, for this night at least, I didn't much care if anyone was the marrying kind or not - not even me. Who could tell? We none of us knew for sure WHAT kind we were, exactly, but as long as were the kind that could sit around eating together and having a lovely time, that was enough. ~ Julie Powell

The good thing about starting your Thanksgiving feast with Oeufs en Gelée is that everything afterward is going to taste pretty goddamned great by comparison, and by the time we'd gotten through the gorgeously crisp and moist goose, the prunes stuffed with duck liver mousse, the cabbage with chestnuts, the green beans, and the creamed onions, aspic was largely forgotten, and we didn't even mind much that I had begun the Thanksgiving preparations with the absolutely insane idea that I would make chocolate soufflé for dessert once we were finished with dinner. This, of course, being the delusion of a diseased mind. ~ Julie Powell

There is a law out there, if not of thermodynamics then of something equally primary and inescapable, that explains why everything from instant messaging to fabulous sex to aspic can in the end be defined as an illustration of the futility of existence. And it really, really sucks. ~ Julie Powell

If I had thought the beef marrow might be a hell of a lot of work for not much difference, I needn't have worried. The taste of the marrow is rich, meaty, intense in a nearly-too-much way. In my increasingly depraved state, I could think of nothing at first but that it tasted like really good sex. But there was something more than that, even. What it really tastes like is life, well lived. Of course the cow I got marrow from had a fairly crappy life – lots of crowds and overmedication and bland food that might or might not have been a relative. But deep in his or her bones, there was a capacity for feral joy. I could taste it. ~ Julie Powell

Julia taught me what it takes to find your way in the world. It's not what I thought it was. I thought it wa all about-I don't know, confidence or will or luck. Those are all some good things to have, no question. But there's something else, somethng that these things grow out of. It's joy. ~ Julie Powell

Metz's Perfection chronicles with lapidary precision one woman's climb back to happiness after not just a spouse's death, but also the shocking recognition that her life before that death was not what she had thought it was. The journey is a painful one, but Ms. Metz is much the stronger for having survived to recount it. ~ Julie Powell

It was only once I was in the car ... that the only two reasons I hadn't joined right in with the loon with the gray crew cut, beating my head and screaming "Fuck!" in primal syncopation, were (1) I'd be embarrassed and (2) I didn't want to get my cute vintage suit any dirtier than it already was. Performance anxiety and a dry-cleaning bill, those were the only things keeping me from stark raving lunacy. ~ Julie Powell

I felt like a Jane Austen heroine all of a sudden, confusedly looking on at all the people she loves, their myriad unpredictable couplings and uncouplings. There would be no marriages at the end of this Austen novel, though, no happy endings, no endings at all. Just jokes and friendships and romances and delicious declarations of independence. ~ Julie Powell

For stalker food, Martha Stewart is the woman to go to. ~ Julie Powell

Which just goes to show, I guess, that dinner parties are like everything else - not as fragile as we think they are. ~ Julie Powell

There, I was just a secretary-shaped confederation of atoms, fighting the inevitability of mediocrity and decay. But here, in the Juliaverse ... energy was never lost, merely converted from one form to another. Here, I took butter and cream and meat and eggs and I made delicious sustenance. ~ Julie Powell

At the end I am always alone. ~ Julie Powell

If there's a sexier sound on this planet than the person you're in love with cooing over the crepes you made for him, I don't know what it is. ~ Julie Powell

The nice thing about having a friend who is crazier than you are is that she bolsters your belief in your own sanity. ~ Julie Powell

The powdered sugar had caramelized and blackened into a sucking tar pit in which my ladyfingers languished like so many sunk mastadons. ~ Julie Powell

There are dinner parties ruined by guests, and there are dinner parties ruined by hosts, and then there are dinner parties when everyone contributes to the disaster. ~ Julie Powell

Cooking saved my life! Sure, there were some miserable moments, but that was sort of the point, to find something challenging and consuming enough to take a place in the center of my life into which was creeping a horrible feeling of stasis and the doom of mediocrity. ~ Julie Powell

I got my undergrad in Creative Writing, and then I didn't get my Masters in obsession, because I figured I already had that covered. ~ Julie Powell

Many of my all-time favorite movies are almost entirely verbal. The entire plot of My Dinner with Andre is "Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory eat dinner." The entire plot of Before Sunrise is "Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy walk around Vienna." But the dialogue takes us everywhere, and as Roger Ebert notes, of My Dinner with Andre, these films may be paradoxically among the most visually stimulating in the history of the cinema: ~ Brian Christian

I've never believed in the idea of an innocent bystander. The act of watching changes what happens. Just because you don't touch anything doesn't mean you are exempt. You might be tempted to forgive me for being just fifteen, in over my head, for not knowing what to do, for not understanding, yet, the way even the tiniest choices domino, until you're irretrievably grown up, the person you were always going to be. Or in Marlena's case, the person you'll never have a chance to be. The world doesn't care that you're just a girl.

Let the record show that I was smarter than I looked. And anyway, I touched. ~ Julie Buntin

My wife is the host of 'Big Brother.' Her name is Julie Chen, and she'll say, 'Da da da, but first we do this.' So they mashed together her saying 'but first' a couple dozen times. Literally. In different outfits. And when you cut it together like that, it appears very robotlike. They called her the Chenbot. ~ Leslie Moonves

I suspect that twenty years down the road they'll be having midlife crises, feeling they were in a straitjacket. Failure to recognize that an education has to be seized rather than delivered to you is the harm that's really done. ~ Julie Lythcott-Haims

Does a crow become a salmon simply because it wished to? You do not know the first thing about mortality, prince-who-is-not. Why would you want to become like them?"
"Because," Grimalkin answered before I could say anything, "he is in love."
"Ahhh." The Witch looked at me and shook her head. "I see. Poor creature. Then you will not hear a word I have to say"
I was in love. With a human.
I smiled bitterly at the thought. The old Ash, if faced with such a suggestion, would've either laughed scornfully or removed the offender's head from his neck. ~ Julie Kagawa

Julie wanted to die of his own whiteness, to be drowned in the tide of his embarrassment on behalf of all uncool white people everywhere when they tried to be cool. ~ Michael Chabon

Children have an easier ability to tap into the surreal than adults do, in a funny kind of way. ~ Julie Taymor

Mind you, I have had in my sojourn on earth as good a time of it as any man, so I can speak with some knowledge. A writer in the Manchester Guardian who is unknown to me lately described me as "the richest man in the world." That sounds a pretty big order, but when I come to think it out I believe he is not far wrong. A rich man is not necessarily a man with a whole pot of money but a man who is really happy. And I am that. ~ Robert Baden-Powell

I talk a lot. I express a lot of my feelings verbally. ~ Julie Delpy

Julie sat on the wall beside him, her hair swirling around her like she was underwater. He imagined the dappled light flashing across her face. Portrait of the young pinnace racer as a mermaid. She smiled at the idea, and Miller smiled back. She would have been here, he knew. Along with Diogo and Fred and all the other OPA militia, patriots of the vacuum, she'd have been in a crash couch, wearing borrowed armor, heading into the station to get herself killed for the greater good. Miller knew he wouldn't have. Not before her. So in a sense, he'd taken her place. He'd become her. They made it, Julie said, or maybe only thought. ~ James S.A. Corey

See you later princess. Don't let leatherface catch you on your way home -Robbie ~ Julie Kagawa

There were many good actresses in my time like Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds, but I was the only dancer. ~ Leslie Caron

He punched me - right in the midst of the Valmores' ball." "He never!" "He did. Of course, I got my licks in too. Man has to stand up for himself, you know." "Oh, Lewie. Is that where that bruise came from? I was afraid you'd been breaking hearts again." "Only two or three a week." "Lewie . . ." Helen scolded fondly, "one of these days someone's father, or brother, or sweetheart will do worse than bruise you." "Then perhaps I ought to swear off women. After all, you are my favorite, Helen, and always shall be. ~ Julie Klassen

But if I told Harvey that, there would be no more secrets and he would move in even closer. And that couldn't happen. The closer he got, the more answers I owed him. ~ Julie Murphy

It's what this night would feel like if I could seize hold of it ~ Julie Anne Long

When is there a boy, even in these materialistic times, to whom the call of the wild and the open road does not appeal? Maybe it is the primitive instinct, anyway it is there. With that key a great door may be unlocked, if it is only to admit fresh air and sunshine into lives that were otherwise grey.
The heroes of the wild, the frontiersmen and explorers, the rovers of the seas, the airmen of the clouds, are pied pipers to the boys. Where they lead the boys will follow and these will dance to their tune when it sings the song of manliness and pluck, of adventure and high endeavors of efficiency and skill, of cheerful sacrifice of self for others. There's meat in this for the boy. There's soul in it. ~ Baden-Powell Robert Baden-Powell

Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or should one say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker; whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned. ~ Enoch Powell

He kept his leg," Boss said. "And as soon as he's stable for travel, he'll be transported back here. ~ Julie Ann Walker

Her laugh was wonderful. It was mischief made musical. ~ Julie Anne Long

You don't want people to suffer or get fat when they're pregnant. ~ Julie Bowen

Gabe nodded a hello, a little shocked at the woman's appearance. She was a knockout. Dark auburn hair curling around her shoulders, pretty green eyes behind square black glasses. He looked back at Duncan but he was looking at the woman as well, and Gabe had been attached long enough to know that look. That was the 'I just want to look at you because you're so beautiful' look. He'd caught himself doing it with Julie more times than was probably acceptable. But he couldn't help himself. And judging by Duncan's look, he couldn't either. As ~ J.M. Madden

Who is your favorite character in the series? Or ... if that's too hard, why do you like each one and who drives you crazy?
Puck: Well, she likes me best, of course. I'm the handsome, charming one.
Ash: Yes, that's why she gave you your own book. Oh, wait.
Puck: No one asked you, ice-boy. ~ Julie Kagawa

This is Huntress placing Panta four-five, four-six on battle stations, I repeat battle stations, time one-two-four-one. Authenticate hotel romeo, all parties acknowledge with initials. ~ Jeremy Powell

When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I'll like it or not. Disagreement, at this state, stimulates me. But once a decision is made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own. ~ Colin Powell

The young fought sleep, she thought, but the old relished it, and at the moment, she felt absolutely ancient. ~ Julie Garwood

So I carried on, waiting for what ever was to come, with or without God's help ~ Julie Halpern

Technically, I was trying to kill Puck. You just happened to be there. But yes, if I'd had the shot, I would have taken it.
-Prince Ash ~ Julie Kagawa

I wouldn't mind that as my epitaph. ~ Julie Andrews Edwards

Nicole Powell of Decatur, Georgia, was off-limits to hot cowboy lawyers. There was no way in hell she was going to return home with her tail between her legs all because she'd let him put HIS there. ~ Victoria Vane

Save the children, save mankind. ~ Aaron B. Powell

The gremlin stopped, blinking up at me with an almost hurt expression. 'Master punish bad kitty?' he said in a pitiful voice.
'No I'm not going to punish the bad kitty,' I said and Grimalkin snorted.
'And you aren't either. I want to talk to you. Will you stay and not run off if we let you go?'
He bobbed his head, as best as he could while his ears were gripped tightly by Puck. 'Master wants Razor stay, Razor stay. Not move until told. Promise. ~ Julie Kagawa

I think that the best way to explain that is that my mother gave me all the color and character and flare and liveliness, and my father gave me all the sanity and nature and all the things that helped me be a more rounded human being. ~ Julie Andrews

Raisins again. I like raisins, but I have a habit of losing one or two on the floor every time I eat them. I always find them later and think they are: a) a mouse turd or b) a cockroach. Then I figure out it's a raisin and sigh with relief. This pretty much happens every time I find a lost raisin. ~ Julie Halpern

In reality, Jesus' vision for intergenerational relationships was anything but cute. It was and is both radical and revolutionary. ~ Kara E. Powell

Gun control? My wife had a job for three years before she found out that her boss was a convicted sex offender - a child molester. She used to take our son to work with her. When we found out, she quit her job and filed for unemployment, but was denied because she didn't have to quit. That's a true story. I wonder what would happen if a young child walked into a room full of child molesters and executed them with an AR-15? What would congress have to say about gun control then? ~ Aaron B. Powell

I think I knew even then it would be my maps that would take me across the world, to places and people unknown and into cultures otherwise closed to me. In mapping them I would come to know them a little and at times my very eagerness pained me. ~ Julie Haydon

Ageing means a loss of a number of skills over time. ~ Julie Bishop

And nobody knows your weak spots better than sisters. Those prissy little virgins, Artemis and Athena, always looking down their smug, goody-goody noses at her. ~ Julie Berry

We tell myths over and over again, lest we forget who we are, lest we not understand that these tales take us through the darkness of our lives, and they put us into a place where you understand what it is to be human. ~ Julie Taymor

It is, indeed, strange how often persons, living in other respects quite unobjectively, can suddenly become acutely objective about some specific concern of their own. ~ Anthony Powell

It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them. ~ Anthony Powell

His words clip out like bullets from a gun - sharp, staccato, shiver-inducing. ~ Julie Johnson

I forget my own name when he smiles like that. ~ Julie Reece