Laurie Colwin Quotes

The best way to eat crabs, as everyone knows, is off newspaper at a large table with a large number of people. ~ Laurie Colwin

How lucky, I thought, were people who had known from earliest childhood what they wanted to do. All the children in my grammar school, who said they wanted to be doctors, had grown up to become doctors. This was also the case apparently with firemen, veterinarians, songwriters, and race car drivers.
I had opted for a kind of pure experience, which, as Doo-Wah had pointed out, is not usually something you get paid for. I did not want to write a book about it. I did not want to write so much as an article. I wanted to be left alone with my experience and go on to the next thing, whatever that was. ~ Laurie Colwin

We know that without food we would die. Without fellowship, life is not worth living. ~ Laurie Colwin

The sharing of food is the basis of social life. ~ Laurie Colwin

These days any planned thing looked good to me. What heaven to have your work cut out for you, to be part of the Big Picture
a picture you did not have to paint yourself. ~ Laurie Colwin

I come from a coffee-loving family, and you can always tell when my sister and I have been around, because both of us collect all the dead coffee from everyone's morning cup, pour it over ice, and drink it. This is a disgusting habit. ~ Laurie Colwin

She said that my good qualities were my bad qualities
this I have come to realize is true of everyone. On the one hand, I was game, eager and perfectly ready to see what was in front of me. On the other hand, I had no sense of direction or destiny. ~ Laurie Colwin

It is a fact of life that people give dinner parties, and when they invite you, you have to turn around and invite them back. Often they retaliate by inviting you again, and you must then extend another invitation. Back and forth you go, like Ping-Pong balls, and what you end up with is called social life. ~ Laurie Colwin

I will never eat fish eyeballs, and I do not want to taste anything commonly kept as a house pet, but otherwise I am a cinch to feed. ~ Laurie Colwin

I am not a fancy cook or an ambitious cook. I am a plain old cook. ~ Laurie Colwin

He was the soul of kindness and concern. The fact that he had talked to my father about this made me want to stab him. But I only said, "I'll talk to Patrick. This doesn't sit right with me. ~ Laurie Colwin

At a certain point, memory begins to be a burden. ~ Laurie Colwin

On Saturday mornings I would walk to the Flavor Cup or Puerto Rico Importing coffee store to get my coffee. Often it was freshly roasted and the beans were still warm. Coffee was my nectar and my ambrosia: I was very careful about it. I decanted my beans into glass ... and I ground them in little batches in my grinder. ~ Laurie Colwin

Lentils are friendly - the Miss Congeniality of the bean world. ~ Laurie Colwin

Holly sat down, as if at home. But, Guido wondered, would she be happy where there were no trays? ~ Laurie Colwin

I do not believe that you have to spend a lot of money to eat well: it is hard to beat a plain old baked potato. ~ Laurie Colwin

No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers. ~ Laurie Colwin

Both happy and sad people can be cheered up by a nice meal, ~ Laurie Colwin

I love to eat out, but even more, I love to eat in. ~ Laurie Colwin

A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins. ~ Laurie Colwin

The old days were slower. People buttered their bread without guilt and sat down to dinner en famille. ~ Laurie Colwin

The thing about homebodies is that they can usually be found at home. I usually am, and I like to feed people. ~ Laurie Colwin

Their first actual kiss was a one-celled organism which, after they had been standing on the stairway kissing for some time, evolved into something rather grander
a bird of paradise, for example. ~ Laurie Colwin

There is really a je ne sais quoi about turkey cooking - the air of festivity, the family squabbles, the constant basting - that does not apply to the turkey breast, which is, really, a convenience of food ... A turkey without seasonal angst is like a baseball game without a national anthem, a winter without snow, a birthday party without candles. ~ Laurie Colwin

Cooking is like love. You don't have to be particularly beautiful or very glamorous, or even very exciting to fall in love. You just have to be interested in it. It's the same thing with food. ~ Laurie Colwin

It is not just the Great Works of mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it. ~ Laurie Colwin

It is my opinion that Norman Rockwell and his ilk have done more to make already anxious people feel guilty than anyone else. ~ Laurie Colwin

Somehow or other, I always end up in a kitchen feeding a crowd. ~ Laurie Colwin

From Laurie Colwin: Lovely writing! About grief she writes: I realized that grief is metabolic: it crawls through you like a disease and takes your energy away. Then it gathers and hits like a sudden migraine, like being hit by a car, like having a large, flat rock hurled at your chest. ~ Laurie Colwin

Sam loved me in a way that was as close as love could come to his mother's indifference. It was playful, bouncy, it accepted the situation between us without annotations, and without realizing it, he stuck me like a buffer between himself and his parents. He had a wife, and that warded them off. How could he be wild if he was settled? How could he be in trouble if he was married? He might have known these things, but coming from that emotionally monosyllabic household, how could he have had a vocabulary for them? ~ Laurie Colwin

As everyone knows, there is only one way to fry chicken correctly. Unfortunately, most people think their method is best, but most people are wrong. Mine is the only right way, and on this subject I feel almost evangelical. ~ Laurie Colwin

Fulfillment leaves an empty space where longing used to be. ~ Laurie Colwin

To feel safe and warm on a cold wet night, all you really need is soup. ~ Laurie Colwin

You should have married a nice girl in her twenties so you can have dozens of babies,'Jane Louise said. 'Instead of the president of the Withered Crone Society. ~ Laurie Colwin

When he went to college he wrote me letters which I answered within four days. Each letter took at least five drafts before I thought it suitable to send to Cambridge. ~ Laurie Colwin

It is always wise to make too much potato salad. Even if you are cooking for two, make enough for five. Potato salad improves with age - that is, if you are lucky enough to have any left over. ~ Laurie Colwin

Most of his time appeared to be spent bumming cigarettes from people whose annual income was about a fifth of his own. ~ Laurie Colwin

It is often to the wary that the events in life are unexpected. Looser types-people who are not busy weighing and measuring every little thing-are used to accidents, coincidences, chance, things getting out of hand, things sneaking up on them. They are the happy children of life, to whom life happens for better or worse. ~ Laurie Colwin

Friendship is not possible between two women one of whom is very well dressed. ~ Laurie Colwin

Once my jars were labeled, I felt contentedly thrilled with myself, as if I had pulled off a wonderful trick. People feel this way when they bake bread or have babies, and although they are perfectly entitled to feel that way, in fact, nature does most of the work. ~ Laurie Colwin

Cooking is like anything else: some people have an inborn talent for it. Some become expert by practicing, and some learn from books. ~ Laurie Colwin

To be effortlessly yourself is a blessing, an ambrosia. It is like a few tiny little puffs of opium which lift you ever so slightly off the hard surface of the world. ~ Laurie Colwin

I roll the covers back up over him and take his hand, noticing how well our palms fit together and thinking back to just after the last time he saved me - when he took my hand and told me that we'd always be together.
I lower my head to his chest and continue to squeeze his palm. Tears fall onto the bedsheets, dampening the fabric just above his heart. "I'm so sorry," I tell him, over and over again.
A few moments later, there's a twitching sensation inside my hand. Ben's fingers glides over my thumb. 'Sorry for what?" he breaths. His voice is raspy and weak.
I lift my head to check his face. His eyelids flutter. The monitor starts beeping faster. And his lips struggle to move.
"Don't try to talk," I tell him, searching for the nurse's call buzzer.
"Please," he whispers, his eyes almost fully open now. "Don't let go."
"I won't," I promise, gripping his hand even harder. ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

Cancer can no longer be classified according to the organ in which it arises. It has to be characterized in terms of the genetic mutation that exists. ~ Laurie Glimcher

Keep on being yourself. ~ Hugh Laurie

You know, I can see two tiny pictures of myself And there's one in each of your eyes. And they're doin' everything I do. Every time I light a cigarette, they light up theirs. I take a drink and I look in and they're drinkin' too. It's drivin' me crazy. It's drivin' me nuts. ~ Laurie Anderson

What I could tell the boy was, the moment we are born appears to be the very same moment we forget we are loved. Now isn't this awkward? Shouldn't the two things dovetail, love and memory? Shouldn't a feeling that powerful be carved on a tree so no one can ignore its message? To come so far to be in this world only to forget something all-important - what kind of a journey is that? I'll bet that 90 percent of the love that surrounds us is dismissed or discounted - the cup of tea a friend makes, the letter from a faraway auntie. The fact that no one feels loved enough merely proves my point. ~ Laurie Fox

But somehow the madness around me and the turmoil I carried within myself acted as counterweights, and I survived in the centre. ~ Laurie R. King

I could never hate you, even if I wanted to. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Ritual abuse is highly organised and, obviously, secretive. It is often linked with other major crimes such as child pornography, child prostitution, the drugs industry, trafficking, and many other illegal and heinous activities. Ritual abuse is organised sexual, physical and psychological abuse, which can be systematic and sustained over a long period of time. It involves the use of rituals - things which the abusers 'need' to do, or 'need' to have in place - but it doesn't have to have a belief system. There doesn't have to be God or the Devil, or any other deity for it to be considered 'ritual'. It involves using patterns of learning and development to keep the abuse going and to make sure the child stays quiet.
There has been, and still is a great deal of debate about whether or not such abuse exists anywhere in the world. There are many people who constantly deny that there is even such a thing as ritual abuse. All I can say is that I know there is. Not only have I been a victim of it myself, but I have been dealing with survivors of this type of abuse for almost 30 years.
If there are survivors, there must be something that they have survived.
The things is, most sexual abuse of children is ritualised in some way. Abusers use repetition, routine and ritual to forced children into the patterns of behaviour they require. Some abusers want their victims to wear certain clothing, to say certain things. They might bathe them or cut them, they might burn them o ~ Laurie Matthew

Laurie, you're an angel! How shall I ever thank you?"
"Fly at me again. I rather liked it," said Laurie, looking
mischievous, a thing he had not done for a fortnight. ~ Louisa May Alcott

Light, Amie, can be blinding when it first comes on. Lasers can be deadly, even when streaming from benevolence. We need perspective. We need it to seem wiser than us, tested and tempered by time. ~ Laurie Perez

Flip a coin. Life or death. Heads or tails. You never know. ~ Laurie Nadel

Introverts prefer introversion; we tend to gain energy by reflecting and expend energy when interacting. Extroverts have the opposite preference; they tend to gain energy by interacting and expend energy while reflecting. ~ Laurie Helgoe

We tilt our heads back and open wide. The snow drifts into our zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities and boyfriend/girlfriend juice, the stain of lies. For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. For one breath everything feels better.
Then it melts.
The bus drivers rev their engines and the ice cloud shatters. Everyone shuffles forward. They don't know what just happened. They can't remember. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Everything we know and love is at risk if we continue to ignore the warnings. ~ Laurie David

Ah, but it wasn't all right, and Jo did mind, for while the curly head lay on her arm a minute after her hard answer, she felt as if she had stabbed her dearest friend, and when he left her without a look behind him, she knew that the boy Laurie never would come again. ~ Louisa May Alcott

All of nature talks to me - if I could just figure out what it's saying - trees are swinging in the breeze. They're talking to me. Insects are rubbing their legs together. They're all talking. They're talking to me. ~ Laurie Anderson

If I had a brontosaurus, I would name him Horace or Morris. But if suddenly one day he had A lot of little brontosauri- I would change his name to Laurie. ~ Shel Silverstein

New believers are the lifeblood of the church. We can either evangelize or fossilize. ~ Greg Laurie

I loved the study of psychology. I didn't love seeing patient after patient. I was perpetually overstimulated, busy decoding everything I took in. ~ Laurie Helgoe

I don't know what idiocies drove me in those days, but they were naive, innocent idiocies in many ways. ~ Laurie Lee

I hate to think I ever make my husband frightened or unhappy, but I suspect I do. ~ Laurie Graham

I undid the wrappings with great curiosity, for Holmes did not normally give gifts. I opened the dark velvet jewller's box and found inside a shiny new set of picklocks, a younger version of his own. Holmes, ever the romantic. Mrs. Hudson would be pleased. ~ Laurie R. King

We don't have real hours and we don't have a boss, so artists create rules for themselves that they then break. It's transgressive in such a personal way. ~ Laurie Simmons

Not many people care what you do. They care about what you do as much as you care about what they do. Think about it. Just exactly that much. You are not the center of the universe. ~ Laurie Anderson

For business and personal relationships to flourish, we must engage with the people in our lives. Together is better. Together is how we win. ~ Laurie Buchanan

Do you make it a habit to go through Sarah's diaries?"

The look Laurie gave him was pure pity. "You're the one who wants to know what everyone is thinking. What makes you better? ~ Mary Higgins Clark

AMY'S LECTURE DID Laurie good, though, of course, he did not own it till long afterward. Men seldom do, for when women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do. Then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it. ~ Louisa May Alcott

It is impossible to fully and fairly understand introversion without looking inside. We aren't just going away, we're going toward something. ~ Laurie A. Helgoe

It's the tradition of American writers getting away in order to see the country - to get a better view. ~ Laurie Anderson

[in response to a jealous comment made by Amber] PJ's mouth snarls open. If you aren't going to play nice, my thorny little bush, I think you should return to the dirty playground that you crawled from. ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

I was having a drink with Hugh Laurie, with whom I'd worked on his series House, and I told him I wanted to write a breakup letter from King George to the colonies. Without blinking, he improv'd at me, "Awwww, you'll be back," wagging his finger. I laughed and filed it away. Thanks, Hugh Laurie. ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

Storytellers are the most powerful people on earth. They might not be the best paid-- but they are the most powerful. Storytellers have the power to move the human heart-- and there is no greater power on earth. ~ Laurie H. Hutzler

The chaos, the organized, instrumental fear and pestilence was everywhere, and still he was in love with his existence. In. Love. With the whole mad mess, the goldenness, the ripening young psyche of the world. ~ Laurie Perez

The next morning, as I picked an Eddie hair off my pant leg, I again considered the possibility of cats controlling the world. "It's possible," I muttered to myself as I dropped the hair into a wastebasket, "that they already do. ~ Laurie Cass

Clearing clutter - be it physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual - brings about ease and inspires a sense of peace, calm, and tranquility. ~ Laurie Buchanan

I pushed my ragged mouth against the mirror. A thousand crushed bleeding lips pushed back at me ... ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

If I can write a book that will help the world make a little more sense to a teen, then that's why I was put on the planet. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

I take it very seriously when I take the pulpit. That I'm representing God. ~ Greg Laurie

What kind of a man thinks it's appropriate to give his soon- to-be bride a lethal weapon for a wedding present? ~ Victoria Laurie

If it were up to me, all boys would come with a label: Failure to take in small doses may result in irrational behavior, poor judgment, and estrangement from one's friends. ~ Laurie Faria Stolarz

When we listen, we hear someone into existence. ~ Laurie Buchanan

The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken hear; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. Pslam 34.18 ~ Laurie Alice Eakes

I want to be in fifth grade again. Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy
old enough to play outside without Mom, too young to go off the block. The perfect leash length. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Marsh looked at me sideways, causing a brief stir of familiarity. "You liked the library?"
"It was all I could do to keep her from bolting herself inside," Alistair told him.
With mock indignation, I protested, "I never even touched a book. I walked through and walked out."
"Her eyes were filled with an unnatural light," Alister confided in his cousin. "I feared for my safety. ~ Laurie R. King

My mother was a fastidious and orderly homemaker. I was the messy but creative type. I picture her following behind me through life with a damp rag and an air of exasperation. ~ Laurie Graham