Main Course Quotes

I bought all these ingredients and headed to Marlboro Man's house, choosing to ignore the fact that Marinated Flank Steak actually needs to marinate. Plus, I didn't know how to operate a grill--Los Angeles County apartment buildings had ordinances against them--so I decided to cook it under the broiler. Having not been a meat eater for years and years, I'd forgotten about the vital importance of not overcooking steak; I just assumed steak was like chicken and simply needed all the pink cooked out of it. I broiled the beautiful, flavorful flank steak to a fine leather.
With all my focus on destroying the main course, I wound up overcooking the angel hair noodles by a good five minutes, so when I stirred in all the cheeses I'd so carefully grated by hand, my Tagliarini Quattro Formaggi resembled a soupy pan of watery cheese grits. How bad could it possibly be? I asked myself as I poured it into garlic-rubbed bowls just like they did at Intermezzo. I figured Marlboro Man wouldn't notice. I watched as he dutifully ate my dinner, unaware that, as I later learned, throughout the meal he seriously considered calling one of the cowboys and asking them to start a prairie fire so he'd have an excuse to leave. ~ Ree Drummond

Sail the main course in a simple sturdy craft. Keep her well stocked with short stories and long laughs. Go fast enough to get there but slow enough to see. Moderation seems to be the key. ~ Jimmy Buffett

Sometimes that's all you can do, I think. Hold hands. Because life gets so scary sometimes, so bleak, so cold, that you are beyond being able to be comforted by mere words.


'Men are for amusement only. They are treats. Like candy. Like ice cream on an Alabama afternoon. A dessert. They are not the main course. As soon as you have a man in your life who becomes the main course, that is the time, my sweet, when you should go on a diet. Right that second. Men are for dessert only.' Envision: honey.
'Yum, yum,' I told her.
'They are yummy.' She winked at me. 'But never take them seriously. A bite here and there is puh-lenty. All three of my husbands died, bless their pea-brained souls, but I never thought of them as the chicken and potatoes. They were always the flamin' cherries jubilee at the end of dinner.' She stared off into space. 'And there was many a time, darlin', that I wanted to set them on fire. ~ Cathy Lamb

I like setting up problems for the viewer, like how do you visually deal with a ring when what's usually in the center of a painting is very important? It's like the main course isn't there and you're having to deal with everything around what would normally be the main course. ~ Robert Mangold

My message is, as it alway has been, moderation: meat as a main course on three days a week, eggs on one, fish on one other and some form of vegetarian meal on the rest constitute a perfectly acceptable, interesting and varied diet. ~ Delia Smith

Often for hors d'oeuvres, I serve room temperature vegetables, something like that, so that the main course might be quite rich but the first course has balanced it out. ~ Sally Schneider

Maybe he was as mad as he said he was, but she could see only a species of miserable fright. Suddenly, like the thud of a boxing glove on her mouth, she saw how close to the edge of everything he was. The agency was tottering, that was bad enough, and now, on top of that, like a grisly dessert following a putrid main course, his marriage was tottering too. She felt a rush of warmth for him, for this man she had sometimes hated and had, for the last three hours at least, feared. A kind of epiphany filled her. Most of all, she hoped he would always think he had been as mad as hell, and not ... not the way his face said he felt. ~ Stephen King

I have a funny side. I have a soft and sympathetic side. I have a serious side, and a seriously romantic side. I have lots of sides; it's the main course I haven't quite figured out. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Nim unwrapped a loaf of fresh dilled rye bread and opened a crock of trout mousse. He slathered up a big slice and handed it to me. [ ... ] We had thinly sliced veal smothered in kumquat sauce, fresh spinach with pine nuts, and fat red beefsteak tomatoes (impossibly rare at this time of year) broiled and stuffed with lemon apple sauce. The wide, fan-shaped mushrooms were sauteed lightly and served as a side dish. The main course was followed by a salad of red and green baby lettuce with dandelion greens and toasted hazelnuts. ~ Katherine Neville

When I'm in need of a quick meal or party dish, a burger is hands-down my go-to pick! Burgers are easy, fast, and don't even require utensils to eat, making them the perfect get-together main course, tailgating essential, and simple dinner recipe to whip up any night of the week. ~ Marcus Samuelsson

Fun can be the dessert of our lives but never its main course. ~ Harold S. Kushner

It was long after midnight and the stars looked damp and chilly; the air was full of the busy silence of the night, which is created by hundreds of small furry things treading very carefully in the hope of finding dinner while avoiding being the main course. ~ Terry Pratchett

We started getting hungry again, and some of the women started chanting, "MEAT, MEAT, MEAT!"
We were having steak tartare. It was the only appropriate main course we could think of, for such a graceless theme, and seeing as nobody in the club was confident making it, we had to order it in. I made chips to serve with it, though. I deep-fried them in beef fat.
The steak was served in little roulades, raw and minced, like horsemeat. It was topped with a raw egg yolk, chopped onions, pickled beetroot, and capers. I had wanted to use the Wisconsin version, which is served on cocktail bread and dubbed "cannibal sandwich," but Stevie insisted we go classic. Not everyone could stomach theirs with the raw egg yolk, too, and so, unusually for a Supper Club, there was quite a lot left over.
We took another break to drink and move about the room. Some of us took MDMA. Emmeline had brought a box of French macarons, tiny pastel-colored things, which we threw over the table, trying to get them into one another's mouth, invariably missing.
For our proper dessert, we had a crepe cake: a stack of pancakes bound together with melted chocolate. We ate it with homemade ice cream, which was becoming a real staple. ~ Lara Williams

Most pleasures are best as a seasoning, not the main course. p. 374 ~ Brandon Mull

At least, you two have decent manners," says Effie as we're finishing the main course. "The pair last year ate everything with their hands like a couple of savages. It completely upset my digestion."
... My mother taught Prim and me to eat properly, so yes, I can handle a fork and knife. But I hate Effie Trinket's comment so much I make a point of eating the rest of my meal with my fingers. Then I wipe my hands on the tablecloth. This makes her purse her lips tightly together. ~ Suzanne Collins

Usually I try to suppress any emotions that savor of regret, because they are invariably aperitifs to a main course of depression, and for the long-lived, that's a recipe for suicide. But that doesn't mean they can't sneak up on me sometimes.
And, like, gang-tackle me. ~ Kevin Hearne

I found university a little dispiriting. I thought I would enter the great halls of Plato, but instead I entered the halls of an intellectual sausage factory. I wanted to do something not on the main course, and chose the environment. ~ Bjorn Lomborg

Turkey is the main course in more Christmas dinners than any other meat or fowl. The high proportion of meat to unusable bone and fat makes it an ideal bird for a feast. Turkeys were domesticated in Mexico long before Spanish explores found them and introduced them into their homeland. From there they spread throughout Europe and gradually replaced most of the native Christmas feast foods. ~ Patricia Del Re

... a waitress came out and plonked in front of each of us a small standard terra-cotta flowerpot in which had been baked a little loaf of bread.
"What's this?" I asked.
"It's bread," she replied.
"But it's in a flowerpot?" She gave me a look that I was beginning to think of as the Darwin stare. It was a look that said, "Yeah? So?"
"Well, isn't that kind of unusual?"
She considered for a moment. "Is a bit, I suppose." "And will we be following a horticultural theme throughout the meal?" Her expression contorted in a deeply pained look, as if she were trying to suck her face into the back of her head. "What?"
"Will the main course arrive in a wheelbarrow?" I elaborated helpfully. "Will you be serving the salad with a pitchfork?"
"Oh, no. It's just the bread that's special."
"I'm so pleased to hear it. ~ Bill Bryson

You know what they say about Southern cooking - butter's the main course - everything else is just a side dish. Why ~ Amy Patrick

Go vegetable heavy. Reverse the psychology of your plate by making meat the side dish and vegetables the main course. ~ Bobby Flay

I've been patient with everything - management, coaches, players - but I want to play. I think I took my time eating my soup, the soup is gone. Now it's time for the main course. The appetizers, throw them out the window. ~ Charles Oakley

Some people prefer eating dessert to the main course. These people have never been really hungry. ~ Vera Nazarian

As relationships progress, the time you spend smooching diminishes. Where kissing was once an enjoyable entree unto itself, it becomes a mere appetizer couples hasten through on the way to the main course. ~ Jenna McCarthy

Okay, that's enough teasing, buddy," she moaned, writhing against him. "I want the main course."
"I'm not through with the appetizer," he returned, lifting her onto the edge of the table and pulling her panties down in the same motion. He flung them somewhere over his shoulder.
"Hey! I've lost track of the number of pairs of underwear I've lost since I met you," she protested in a voice thick with passion and amusement.
"I'll buy you a store." Rick sat in her vacated chair and leaned in to kiss the insides of her thighs. ~ Suzanne Enoch

Singlehood is not longer a state to be overcome as soon as possible. It has its own rewards. Marriage is not the gateway to adulthood anymore. For most people it's the dessert - desirable, but no longer the main course. ~ Stephanie Coontz

Perhaps it'll give me an idea for the perfect main course. What do you think of roasted goat?"

"After witnessing its beheading or before?" she asked, looking like she was moments away from vomiting. "You do know that's what cookbooks are for, correct? Inspiration without the labor. Or carnage. I swear you miss being surrounded by death. ~ Kerri Maniscalco

Yield 1 main course Prep time approximately 2 minutes Processing time approximately 10 minutes Calorie Burn 172 Calories 105 Net-Calories -67 Ingredients: Olive oil cooking spray Pinch of red pepper flakes, plus more as desired ½ head cauliflower, grated on the small holes of box grater to the size of rice (about 1 cup) Kosher salt ~ Rocco DiSpirito

That night, when SanJuanna had cleared the main course and brought dessert in, my mother called for quiet and said,
"Boys, I have an announcement to make. Your sister made the apple pies tonight. I'm sure we will all enjoy them very much."
"Can I learn how, ma'am?" said Jim Bowie.
"No, J.B. Boys don't bake pies," Mother said.
"Why not?" he said.
"They have wives who make pies for them."
"But I don't have a wife."
"Darling, I'm sure you will have a very nice one someday when you're older, and she'll make you many pies. Calpurnia, would you care to serve?"
Was there any way I could have a wife, too? I wondered as I cut through the browned C and promptly shattered the entire crust. ~ Jacqueline Kelly

In essence, life is a buffet and love is the main course. ~ Felix Alexander

You're not dessert, Zane. You're the main course, Ty informed him in a husky drawl. And you have about five seconds to take your pick of flat surface before I do it for you. ~ Abigail Roux

When the zebra-striped lizards return, bulbous eyes twisting in every direction, they carry a platter garnished with dried fruit and something that resembles a duck. It's plucked and roasted but still has its head intact. A warm, herbal scent tickles my nose. At least it's cooked.
"May I introduce you all to the main course?" Morpheus spreads out an arm with dramatic flair. "Dinner, meet your worthy adversaries, the hungry guests."
My tongue dries to sandpaper as the bird's eyes pop open, and it hobbles to stand on webbed feet, flesh brown and glistening with glaze and oil. There's a bell hung around its neck, and it jingles as the duck bows to greet everyone.
This cannot be happening.
Morpheus drags the heavy mallet from beside his chair and pounds it on the table like a judge's gavel. "Now that we're all acquainted, let the walloping begin."
Gossamer launches from Morpheus's shoulder and leaves the room with the other sprites as mass confusion erupts. All the guests leap to their feet, mallets in hand, to chase the jingling duck. ~ A.G. Howard

For all its outwardly easy Latin charm, Buenos Aires was making me feel sick and upset, so I did take that trip to the great plains where the gaucho epics had been written, and I did manage to eat a couple of the famous asados: the Argentine barbecue fiesta (once summarized by Martin Amis's John Self as 'a sort of triple mixed grill swaddled in steaks') with its slavish propitiation of the sizzling gods of cholesterol. Yet even this was spoiled for me: my hosts did their own slaughtering and the smell of drying blood from the abattoir became too much for some reason (I actually went 'off' steak for a good few years after this trip). Then from the intrepid Robert Cox of the Buenos Aires Herald I learned another jaunty fascist colloquialism: before the South Atlantic dumping method was adopted, the secret cremation of maimed and tortured bodies at the Navy School had been called an asado. In my youth I was quite often accused, and perhaps not unfairly, of being too politicized and of trying to import politics into all discussions. I would reply that it wasn't my fault if politics kept on invading the private sphere and, in the case of Argentina at any rate, I think I was right. The miasma of the dictatorship pervaded absolutely everything, not excluding the aperitifs and the main course. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The rulers of your minds indulge in proverbs, but they've forgotten the main one, that love cannot be forced, and they have a deeply rooted habit of liberating people and making them happy, especially those who haven't asked for it. You probably fancy that there's no better place in the world for me than your camp and your company. I probably should even bless you and thank you for my captivity, for your having liberated me from my family, my son, my home, my work, from everything that's dear to me and that I live by. ~ Boris Pasternak

Spoiler: I didn't win the Main Event. You had suspicions, you say? For one thing, the subtitle of this book would be "The Amazing Life-Affirming Story of an Unremarkable Jerk Who Won the World Series of Poker!" instead of having the word "Death" in it. For another, do these sound like the words of a motherfucker who won a million goddamn dollars? ~ Colson Whitehead

Jen[nifer Lawrence]'s main goal in life is to get me to laugh while we're filming sad scenes. And it's the HUNGER GAMES. ~ Willow Shields

My main motivation is not to get bored. I'm just hoping I get a vaguely maverick reputation. ~ Vikram Seth

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. ~ Wendell Berry

Following Nietzsche's arguments concerning the genealogy of the word "good"(and "evil"), one could also say that the main difference between "masters"and the "herd" (as the new masters) is that masters are the ones who "give names" (and can thus say "this is so-and-so") whereas the "herd" fights for the -interpretation- of these names ("this -means- so-and-so"). Yet this interpretation is itself a form of mastery, and is often much more tyrannical than the act of "giving names". ~ Alenka Zupančič

I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money ... In fact, these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true. ~ Henry David Thoreau

My main form of exercise is my bike. I don't have a car, so I cycle everywhere. ~ Sophie Okonedo

When you wrote a song way back in the day, you were writing material to play live. And you would buy the CD at the shows if you like the show. You may not listen to the CD, you might just throw it in the back of your car and let it warp in the sun. The main thing was you saw the song at the show. ~ Travis Morrison

In the United States, one of the main topics of academic political science is the study of attitudes and policy and their correlation. The study of attitudes is reasonably easy in the United States: heavily-polled society, pretty serious and accurate polls, and policy you can see, and you can compare them. ~ Noam Chomsky

On this occasion Kyu remarked that his main task these days was to find husbands for those of the Emperor's concubines who had reached the age of thirty without ever having relations with the Emperor. Zhu Di farmed these out to his son, with instructions to marry them off.


'Would you like a wife?' Kyu asked Bold slyly. 'A thirty year old virgin, expertly trained? ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

The city of Granada, so gloriously provided with architectural reminders of its Islamic heritage, was particularly anxious to show that it was a more ancient and distinguished Christian centre than Toledo or Santiago de Compostela, and it also wanted to outface the upstart royal capital Madrid. These aims were much assisted by the 'discovery' from 1588 onwards of a series of forged early Christian relics (plomos, or lead books) hidden in the minaret of the former main Granadan mosque and in various nearby caves. ~ Diarmaid MacCulloch

The main obstacle to our development is our lack of knowledge about the nature of consciousness itself. ~ David Hawkins

He belonged to a certain breed of gentlemen, only to be met with in London, whose main occupation is the wearing of expensive and fashionable clothes; how they pass their lives in ostentatious idleness, gambling and drinking to excess and spending months at a time in Brighton and other fashionable watering places; how in recent years this breed seemed to have reached a sort of perfection in Christopher Drawlight. Even his dearest friends would have admitted that he possessed not a single good quality.1 ~ Susanna Clarke

Advertising, an art, is constantly besieged and compromised by logicians and technocrats, the scientists of our profession who wildly miss the main point about everything we do ... ~ George Lois

I grew up in South Africa, but like many people at that time, I couldn't bear living in the country. The main motivation for moving to Britain was to get away. ~ Manfred Mann

I just really like writing and making television shows. There are ego rewards in doing battle with other television programs in prime time in the main season. I suppose there are times when I might look at that and think that's the major league. But when you look at it, ultimately would I really want to gamble my livelihood and my ability to connect with my fan base or write a show that I really like writing, or in some cases direct a show that I really like directing, for the sake of winning an ego battle? It's totally not worth it. That stuff is so ephemeral. ~ Matt Nix

Problem is, "everyone else" is as crowd-like as "everyone." Their opinions usually aren't unique, and their analysis often isn't any broader or better than the main crowd ~ Kenneth L. Fisher

Today is the first day in history.

-One of Nathan's Daily Gems
From the 'Book Store ON Main Street'
Seal Beach, CA ~ Diana Hollingsworth Gessler

The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

I didn't know what to do. I'm in love with this woman, I'm married to this other woman, and I'm in trouble, so I call my two friends. That's all I need, two. I need the main guy and the guy I go to when I drain the main guy. ~ Marc Maron

Very often, if I know the orchestra doesn't know a piece or it's a new piece, I have main ideas about it. But then we start to play and I never talk about places where they played so beautiful and so clear in the beginning that there is nothing to say. ~ Kurt Masur

You have read and heard that communist theory-the science of communism created in the main by Marx, this doctrine of Marxism-has ceased to be the work of a single socialist of the nineteenth century, even though he was a genius, and that it has become the doctrine of millions and tens of millions of proletarians all over the world, who are applying it in their struggle against capitalism. ~ Vladimir Lenin

Taylor Swift on why girls look up to her:
It's the message. I try to have a normal life and look at things in a normal way, under very abnormal circumstances. That's always going to be my main goal, that's always what I'm going to strive for, to be a normal human being. It's interesting because you're put in really abnormal situations. You have an abnormal-size microscope covering your life and everything you do. You look at the idea of being 22, that's when you're supposed to be out there living and being selfish and making mistakes and messing up. If I mess up once, it's a headline everywhere. ~ Taylor Swift

The main problem was a pacing problem. I had wanted the project to be about 20-30 issues, and I should have written it out as a full script beforehand. ~ Chester Brown

He felt a mixture of fear and excitement, but his main concerns were not dying, making his mentors proud, and not making a fool of himself, in that order of importance. ~ Wesley Chu

Do you want to give a special gift in the New Year to someone you love? Then let him or her realize this: We are the main shepherd of our fate, we are the main designer of our destiny! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Hey." Her grin grew as she glanced from me to Nash, then back. "You're blocking the fridge."
"There's a cooler in the other room." Nash nodded toward the main part of the house.
Emma shrugged. "Yeah, but no one's making out in front of it. ~ Rachel Vincent

Science is the ultimate pornography, analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate objects or events from their contexts in time and space. This obsession with the specific activity of quantified functions is what science shares with pornography. ~ J.G. Ballard

One of the main concerns of philosophy is to warn people against jumping to conclusions. ~ Jostein Gaarder

Alice, you might be the product of the biggest ball of ignorance, confidence, and good fortune the universe has ever manufactured. But if you're thinking that you can take your results at the virtual tables and your grand tactic of Ignorance Is Bliss, and make that work for the Main Event, forget it - it WON'T. ~ Elle Lothlorien