“There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the Twenties. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.”

“Never be daunted in public' was an early Hemingway phrase that had more than once bolstered me in my timid twenties. I changed it resolutely to 'Never be daunted in private'.- M.F.K. Fisher "A Is for Dining Alone”

“First we eat, then we do everything else.”

“I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.”

“Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.”

“There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.”

“Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.”

“A writing cook and a cooking writer must be bold at the desk as well as the stove.”

“(We loved Mother too, completely, but we were finding out, as Father was too, that it is good for parents and for children to be alone now and then with one another...the man alone or the woman, to sound new notes in the mysterious music of parenthood and childhood.)That night I not only saw my Father for the first time as a person. I saw the golden hills and the live oaks as clearly as I have ever seen them since; and I saw the dimples in my little sister's fat hands in a way that still moves me because of that first time; and I saw food as something beautiful to be shared with people instead of as a thrice-daily necessity.”

“Like most humans, I am hungry...our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it...”

“If I were rich, I would buy him a new black suit. ... If I had next week's allowance and had not spent this week's on three Cherry Flips ...”