Pegler Kitchen Quotes

We don't learn to love each other well in the easy moments. Anyone is good company at a cocktail party. But love is born when we misunderstand one another and make it right, when we cry in the kitchen, when we show up uninvited with magazines and granola bars, in an effort to say, I love you. ~ Shauna Niequist

However hyped the risk of germs may be, it is at least real. Some corporations go so far as to conjure threats where there are none. A television ad for Brita, the German manufacturer of water-filtration systems, starts with a close-up of a glass of water on a kitchen table. The sound of a flushing toilet is heard. A woman opens a door, enters the kitchen, sits at the table and drinks the water. The water in your toilet and the water in your faucet "come from the same source," the commercial concludes. Sharp-eyed viewers will also see a disclaimer a the start of the ad printed in tiny white letters: MUNICIPAL WATER IS TREATED FOR CONSUMPTION. This is effectively an admission that the shared origin of the water in the glass and the toilet is irrelevant and so the commercial makes no sense--at least not on a rational level. As a pitch aimed at Gut, however, it makes perfect sense. The danger of contaminated drinking water is as old as humanity, and the worst contaminant has always been feces. Our hardwired defense against contamination is disgust, an emotion that drives us to keep our distance from the contaminant. By linking the toilet and the drinking glass, the commercial connects feces to our home's drinking water and raises an ancient fear--a fear that can be eased with the purchase of one of the company's many fine products. ~ Daniel Gardner

His master plan to get them all out the door early met its first check of the day when he opened his closet door to discover that Zap the Cat, having penetrated the security of Vorkosigan House through Miles's quisling cook, had made a nest on the floor among his boots and fallen clothing to have kittens. Six of them.
Zap ignored his threats about the dire consequences of attacking an Imperial Auditor, and purred and growled from the dimness in her usual schizophrenic fashion. Miles gathered his nerve and rescued his best boots and House uniform, at a cost of some high Vor blood, and sent them downstairs for a hasty cleaning by the overworked Armsman Pym. The Countess, delighted as ever to find her biological empire increasing, came in thoughtfully bearing a cat-gourmet tray prepared by Ma Kosti that Miles would have had no hesitation in eating for his own breakfast. In the general chaos of the morning, however, he had to go down to the kitchen and scrounge his meal. The Countess sat on the floor and cooed into his closet for a good half-hour, and not only escaped laceration, but managed to pick up, sex, and name the whole batch of little squirming furballs before tearing herself away to hurry and dress. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

And you're too hard on him because he reminds you of your father."
"From the time he was twenty winters I kept finding him with my father's kitchen staff."
"He's lusty."
"He's a whore. ~ G.A. Aiken

She had practically taken ownership of his kitchen and arguing with her over it only left him with a raging headache. She could cook, thank fucking God, but she was still crazy.
And not in a fun way. ~ Bethany-Kris

Floyd arrived in the kitchen and leapt onto Casper's back, then proceeded to start biting his neck. I'm an only child with a smallish family who had never done Christmas in a big way, but there was something about having two male cats tenderly humping in the corner of the room that made the occasion a little more festive. ~ Tom Cox

My abortion was a normal medical procedure that got tangled up in my bad relationship, my internalized fatphobia, my fear of adulthood, my discomfort with talking about sex; and one that, because of our culture's obsession with punishing female sexuality and shackling women to the nursery and the kitchen, I was socialized to approach with shame and describe only in whispers. But the procedure itself was the easiest part. Not being able to have one would have been the real trauma. ~ Lindy West

She dampened her lips. "I . . . I have defenses you don't know of, and" - she gestured to the half wall revealing the kitchen beyond - "I have pepper spray in the kitchen."
"Pepper spray in the kitchen," he said tonelessly.
"All right, all right!" She dropped the bag with the box on a coffee table that held a few large picture books on the Old West and hurried into the kitchen, coming back with the pepper spray, which she stuck on a bookcase shelf next to the door. He took it down and checked the expiration date. "You should have tossed this two years ago. ~ Robin D. Owens

The sounds of people entering the kitchen snap me out of my thoughts. Before I can react, creepy moaning noises and breathless giggles erupt from the other side of my counter."Oh, Grant," a familiar voice sighs.I pop up suddenly, unable to believe my ears. Guess what I see? Jane, locked in the embrace of a balding middle aged man whom I'm pretty sure is married."Jane!" I gasp.They both scream a little and break apart, wide-eyed.
"Violet!" Jane gasps, holding a hand against her heart."I thought you were a lesbian," I blurt out.
"It's not what it - what? Why would you think I'm a lesbian?""Oh ... " I shrug. "Never mind. I should go. ~ Nicole Christie

hair. He's bald now. But he still looks like he could ride a bull ragged." I jump at the sound of the garage door. Mom gives me a little wave, then crosses the kitchen as silently as if she were floating on a magic carpet and disappears down the hall. Moments later, my father walks through the kitchen door, his face drawn and tired. "I figured you'd be waiting for me." "Dad, we've got to talk." Dread seems to seep from the pores in his face. "Let me get a drink. I'll meet you in the library. ~ Greg Iles

We all wear masks
to veil the truth.
Truth is nakedness.
Truth is fear.
Truth is the gardener
making you sit on
his lap
asking you to
light his cigarette.
Truth is father -
with a limp cigarette on his lips
- telling you to never
use his matches
to light it for him.
Truth is father
yelling:
"It is not
nice for little girls
to do so".
Truth is a curious girl
wanting to
ignite a match
like a woman.
Truth is the maid watching
from the kitchen,
knowing.
But knowing isn't truth.
Truth is the maid calling:
Come. Come.
Truth is the gardener understanding.
But understanding isn't truth.
Truth is the maid saying,
"Stay away!"
Truth is a girl thinking
she is in control.
That nothing happened,
nothing bad.
But the truest truth
is a girl knowing,
a girl understanding that
on that day
someone stole
a little piece of her
truth. ~ Kamand Kojouri

I'm hypoglycemic and squeamish and liable to pass out at the first sign of blood. That happened this morning. I came into the kitchen and found blood on the floor, right next to a few dead hookers. ~ Jarod Kintz

When we would visit, the ritual was the same. My grandfather would put out a spread on the kitchen table: six or eight kinds of lunch meat, including Pennsylvania esoterics like Lebanon bologna and souse; white and rye bread; pickles; two mustards; and mayonnaise. We would all sit around that kitchen table and construct our sandwiches and then eat those sandwiches in silence, because that is how white people show affection. ~ Phoebe Robinson

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be? ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The milk is long since out of date, the bread all has mold and I think you could start a bacterial plague with what's in the crisper here…"
"Order a pizza," he suggested. "There's a place down on the corner that still owes me ten pizzas, paid for in advance."
"You can't eat pizza for breakfast!"
"Why can't I? I've been doing it for a week."
"You can cook," she said accusingly.
"When I'm sober," he agreed.
She glowered at him and went back to her chore. "Well, the eggs are still edible, barely, and there's an unopened pound of bacon. I'll make an omelet."
He collapsed into the chair at the kitchen table while she made a fresh pot of coffee and set about breaking eggs.
"You look very domesticated like that," he pointed out with a faint smile. "After we have breakfast, why don't you come to bed with me?"
She gave him a shocked glance. "I'm pregnant," she reminded him.
He nodded and laughed softly. "Yes, I know. It's an incredible turn-on."
Her hand stopped, poised in midair with a spoon in it. "Wh…What?"
"The eggs are burning," he said pleasantly.
She stirred them quickly and turned the bacon, which was frying in another pan. He thought her condition was sexy? She couldn't believe he was serious.
But apparently he was, because he watched her so intently over breakfast that she doubted if he knew what he was eating.
"Mr. Hutton told the curator of the museum in Tennessee that I wasn't coming back, and he ~ Diana Palmer

I closed my eyes under the fluroescent lights and tried to make another birthday wish, a onetime do-over, a rebate, a trade-in on the kitchen sink kiss that started everything, offered up for just one last miracle. ~ Sarah Ockler

Peabody, with me."
She waited until they were back in her office. "Don't hover over McNab like that."
"Sir?"
"You hover over him, you're going to make him think you're worried."
"I am worried. The twenty-four-"
"Worry all you want, dump on me if you need to. But don't let him see it. He's starting to fray, and he's trying hard not to show it. You try just as hard not to show it. If you need to vent, go out there on the kitchen terrace. Scream your lungs out."
"Is that what you do?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes I kick inanimate objects. Sometimes I jump Roarke and have jungle sex. The last," she said after a beat, "is not an option for you."
"But I think it would really make me feel better, and be a more productive member of the investigative team."
"Good, humor is good. Get me coffee. ~ J.D. Robb

Many of the artifacts of my house had become potential devices for my own destruction: the attic rafters (and an outside maple or two) a means to hang myself, the garage a place to inhale carbon monoxide, the bathtub a vessel to receive the flow from my opened arteries. The kitchen knives in their drawers had but one purpose for me. ~ William Styron

A driving snow-storm in the night and still raging; five or six inches deep on a level at 7 A.M. All birds are turned into snowbirds. Trees and houses have put on the aspect of winter. The traveller's carriage wheels, the farmer's wagon, are converted into white disks of snow through which the spokes hardly appear. But it is good now to stay in the house and read and write. We do not now go wandering all abroad and dissipated, but the imprisoning storm condenses our thoughts. I can hear the clock tick as not in pleasant weather. My life is enriched. I love to hear the wind howl. I have a fancy for sitting with my book or paper in some mean and apparently unfavorable place, in the kitchen, for instance, where the work is going on, rather a little cold than comfortable. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Daniel looked down the barrel of the shotgun al set to blow his
brains out and grinned. These days, even a gun-toting, trigger-happy
female was a delight to behold, and she was perfect.
Sunlight streamed in through the kitchen window. She all but shone
with it, like an angel or a princess or something. Something a little
overdue for a bath and a lot on edge, but something very good just
the same. The feeling of sweet relief rushing through him nearly
buckled his knees.
Tall and curvy, around thirty at a guess, and uninfected, she was by
far the best thing he had ever seen in jeans and a t-shirt. Not even the
dried blood splattered on the wal behind her could diminish the
picture she made.
Sadly, his girl did not appear to share his joy ~ Kylie Scott

Now only the kitchen and I are left. It's just a little nicer than being all alone. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

Our kitchen is warm; it's who we are. And it has everything. Honestly, I could get rid of the rest of the house and just live in the kitchen. ~ Ralph Lauren

In the background Bowie sings of lawmen and cavemen, sailors fighting in dance halls, and I wish he were here now, in this kitchen with me, and I would hold his hand and together we would talk of life - on Mars, or otherwise. ~ David Arnold

By the time Myron was forced to return, their clients were scattering into the night like kitchen help during an immigration bust. ~ Harlan Coben

You can't walk me to school," Tommy said. He came into the kitchen, sat down before his plate, and stared at it, waiting for Sammy to pile it with eggs. "Mom, you can't possibly. I would die. I would absolutely die."

"He would die," Sammy told Rosa.

"Which would be very embarrassing for me," Rosa said. "Standing there next to a dead body in front of William Floyd Junior High. ~ Michael Chabon

Ah," Caspar exclaimed when he walked into the kitchen. "The grey is a good choice. Makes you look much less demon-of-the-night."
"Please, Caspar," he implored. "A date with a live woman. Soon. ~ Elizabeth Hunter

The Cremulator" sounds like a cartoon villain or the name of a monster truck but is in fact the name of what is essentially a bone blender, roughly the size of a kitchen crockpot. I ~ Caitlin Doughty

Knock-knock." Gina poked her head in the door.
"Come on in," Jones said. "We've got all our clothes on for a change. Oh, wait, it's you who gets it on in the - "
"Okay," Gina said. "Am I ever going to live this down?"
"Eventually," Molly said. "But Max singing you old Elvis songs over the walkie-talkie? Honey, that's going to be impossible to kill."
"I think it's sweet," Jones told her.
"The singing or the kitchen tabling?" she asked.
"Both," he said. "Seriously, Gina. He's all right. ~ Suzanne Brockmann

I record my radio show, and my staff makes me a nice lunch in the kitchen, usually fish - whatever's freshest and line-caught - and a salad. I drink water and herbal tea, a blend of catnip, elderberry, and horehound. ~ Martha Stewart

If there's a feeling to home, it's this. A place where there are no secrets, where nothing stays buried; not the past and not yourself. Where you can be all the versions of you, see it all reflected back at you as you walk the same stairs, the same halls, the same rooms. Feel the ghost of your mother as you sit at the kitchen table, hear the words of your father circling round and round after dinner, and your brother stopping by, wishing you'd be a little better, a little stronger ... It's four walls echoing back everything you've ever been and everything you've ever done, and it's the people who stay despite it all. Through it all. For it all. ~ Megan Miranda

Ruby: I've decided. I'm putting my Gary on a diet.
Rosie: You're putting him on a diet? How on earth can you control what your twenty-one-year-old son eats?
Ruby: Oh it's easy; I'll just nail down everything to the floor.
Rosie: So what kind of diet is it?
Ruby: I don't know. I bought a magazine, but there are so many stupid diets out there I don't know which one to pick. Remember that ridiculous one that you and I did last year? The alphabet one where we had to eat foods beginning with a certain letter every day?
Rosie: Oh yeah! How long did we do that for?!
Ruby: Em . . . that would be 26 days of course Rosie
Rosie: Oh . . . right . . . of course. You put on weight on the third day.
Ruby: That's because the third day was the lucky letter "C" . . . Cakes . . . mmmm
Rosie: Well we made up for it on the last day. I was bloody starving on "Z" day; I was practically chasing zebras with a kitchen knife around the zoo. Could have eaten the zoo I suppose . . .
Ruby: You should have done what I did, I ate like a queen. I became German for the day and ate "ze cakes" and "ze buns." Oh I don't know Rosie. I think I'll just invent a diet of my own and give those stupid magazines a run for their money ~ Cecelia Ahern

It is easy to conceive that a band of interested men, such as placemen, pensioners, lords of the bedchamber, lords of the kitchen, lords of the necessary-house, and the lord knows what besides, can find as many reasons for monarchy as their salaries, paid at the expense of the country, amount to; but if I ask the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and down through all the occupations of life to the common labourer, what service monarchy is to him? he can give me no answer. If I ask him what monarchy is, he believes it is something like a sinecure. ~ Thomas Paine

When we can't find my sister, we know / she is under the kitchen table, a book in her hand, / a glass of milk and a small bowl of peanuts beside her. / We know we can call Odella's name out loud, / slap the table hard with our hands, / dance around it singing 'She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain' / so many times the song makes us sick / and the circling makes us dizzy / and still / my sister will do nothing more / than slowly turn the page. ~ Jacqueline Woodson

Calla." My mother's coaxing voice stopped me. "It is of course perfectly acceptable for Renier to call on you, but remember that you are a lady. Don't bring shame on yourself by making poor choices."
"No, of course not." I kept my eyes on the hardwood floor, thinking about Shay's kiss and how much more I'd wanted from him.
A sly smile hovered on Ren's lips when I returned to the kitchen table.
If he heard what Mom said, I'm going to kill her. ~ Andrea Cremer

With the gun which was too big for him, the breech-loader which did not even belong to him but to Major de Spain and which he had fired only once, at a stump on the first day to learn the recoil and how to reload it with the paper shells, he stood against a big gum tree beside a little bayou whose black still water crept without motion out of a cane-brake, across a small clearing and into the cane again, where, invisible, a bird, the big woodpecker called Lord-to-God by negroes, clattered at a dead trunk. It was a stand like any other stand, dissimilar only in incidentals to the one where he had stood each morning for two weeks; a territory new to him yet no less familiar than that other one which after two weeks he had come to believe he knew a little--the same solitude, the same loneliness through which frail and timorous man had merely passed without altering it, leaving no mark nor scar, which looked exactly as it must have looked when the first ancestor of Sam fathers' Chickasaw predecessors crept into it and looked about him, club or stone axe or bone arrow drawn and ready, different only because, squatting at the edge of the kitchen, he had smelled the dogs huddled and cringing beneath it and saw the raked ear and side of the bitch that, as Sam had said, had to be brave once in order to keep on calling herself a dog, and saw yesterday in the earth beside the gutted log, the print of the living foot. He heard no dogs at all. He never did certainly hear them. He only hea ~ William Faulkner

With plastic siding that was cracked and fading, the trailer squatted on stacked cinder blocks, a temporary foundation that had somehow become permanent over time. It had a single bedroom and bath, a cramped living area, and a kitchen with barely enough room to house a mini refrigerator. Insulation was almost nonexistent, and humidity had warped the floors over the years, making it seem as if he were always walking on a slant. The linoleum in the kitchen was cracking in the corners, the minimal carpet was threadbare, and he'd furnished the narrow space with items he'd picked up over the years at thrift stores. Not a single photograph adorned the walls. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Eddie Carroll had just come in from outside, and read Noonan's letter standing in the mudroom. He flipped to the beginning of the story. He stood reading for almost five minutes before noticing he was uncomfortably warm. He tossed his jacket at a hook and wandered into the kitchen.

He sat for a while on the stairs to the second floor, turning through the pages. Then he was stretched on the couch in his office, head on a pile of books, reading in a slant of late October light, with no memory of how he had got there.

He rushed through to the ending, then sat up, in the grip of a strange, bounding exuberance. He thought it was possibly the rudest, most awful thing he had ever read, and in his case that was saying something. He had waded through the rude and awful for most of his professional life, and in those fly-blown and diseased literary swamps had discovered flowers of unspeakable beauty, of which he was sure this was one. It was cruel and perverse and he had to have it. He turned to the beginning and started reading again.

("Best New Horror") ~ Joe Hill

It is a scientific fact that the crack between the stove and the kitchen counter serves as a kind of voracious black hole, sucking in all falling objects within a meter radius. ~ Jared Gulian

I was pretty sure the only two rooms I needed in my house were a kitchen with a huge table and a library full of books. "It'll ~ April White

Don't be upset," he whispered.
"I couldn't stop it from happening," she said in a plaintive voice.
"You weren't supposed to," he said tenderly. "I was playing with you. Teasing you."
"But I wanted it to last longer. It's our wedding night, and it's already over." Pausing, Beatrix added glumly, "At least my part of it is."
Christopher averted his face, but she could see that he was struggling to contain a laugh. When he had mastered himself, he looked down at her with a slight smile and smoothed her hair back from her face. "I can make you ready again."
Beatrix was quiet for a moment as she evaluated her spent nerves and limp body. "I don't think so," she said. "I feel like a wrung-out kitchen mop."
"I promise to make you ready again," he said, his voice threaded with amusement.
"It will take a long time," Beatrix said, still frowning.
Gathering her into his arms, Christopher crushed his mouth over hers. "I can only hope so. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I was always told to be a cook in the kitchen, a lady in the parlor and a wh
e in the bedroom. ~ Melissa Gorga

Pancakes! I jumped from my bed excitedly and jogged to the kitchen: my quick morning run. ~ Kia Carrington-Russell

The technology of food matters even when we barely notice it is there. From fire onward, there is a technology behind everything we eat, whether we recognize it or not. Behind every loaf of bread, there is an oven. Behind a bowl of soup, there is a pan and a wooden spoon (unless it comes from a can, another technology altogether). Behind every restaurant-kitchen foam, there will be a whipping canister, charged with N2O. ~ Bee Wilson

I've lost my mind," Alex muttered, grabbing her knives again and stomping back across the kitchen. "I woke up this morning a boring little chef on planet earth, and somehow ended up in the Twilight Zone as a third-rate stand-in for Buffy the Vampire Slayer". ~ Lynsay Sands

And while she read her cards and muttered to herself, I would leaf through my collection of cookery cards, incanting the names of never-tasted dishes like mantras, like the secret formulae of life. Boeuf en daube. Champignons farcis à la grèque. Escalopes à la Reine. Crème caramel. Schokoladentorte. Tiramisu. In the secret kitchen of my imagination I made them all, tested, tasted them, added to my collection of recipes wherever we went, pasted them into my scrapbook like photographs of old friends. They gave weight to my wanderings, the glossy clippings shining out from between the smeary pages like signposts along our erratic path.
I bring them out now like long-lost friends. Soupe de tomates à la gasconne, served with fresh basil and a slice of tartelette méridonale, made on biscuit-thin pâte brisée and lush with the flavors of olive oil and anchovy and the rich local tomatoes, garnished with olives and roasted slowly to produce a concentration of flavors that seems almost impossible. ~ Joanne Harris

Don-Keun was a new man. The moment they arrived, he vanished for a second. We heard muffled ecstatic screaming coming from somewhere in the back of the Waffle House kitchen, then he reappeared, his face shining with the kind of radiance usually associated with religious epiphany. ~ Maureen Johnson

The bride nodded and said, 'Of course, but where is the kitchen, the spices, the oil and the vessels? ~ Sudha Murty