Julia Child

Cooking is one failure after another and thats how you finally learn.

I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give.

If you're buying tomatoes pick them up and smell them-they should have a lovely perfume. They need to be kept at fifty degrees or above, particularly during the growing season, because that's when they develop their flavor.

A party without cake is just a meeting.

Life itself is the proper binge.

Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.

Freshness is essential. That makes all the difference.

To be able to serve and to eat a whole fish, especially a trout, is part of civilized dining. This applies particularly to the young, who should take to it as soon as they can handle knife and fork; this is a fine way for them to begin taking pride in themselves and their abilities.

A party without cake is really just a meeting.

Cooking well doesnt mean cooking fancy.

In Paris and later in Marseille, I was surrounded by some of the best food in the world, and I had an enthusiastic audience in my husband, so it seemed only logical that I should learn how to cook 'la cuisine bourgeoise' - good, traditional French home cooking.

Animals that we eat are raised for food in the most economical way possible, and the serious food producers do it in the most humane way possible. I think anyone who is a carnivore needs to understand that meat does not originally come in these neat little packages.

People who love to eat are always the best people.

Wine is a living liquid containing no preservatives. Its life cycle comprises youth maturity old age and death. When not treated with reasonable respect it will sicken and die.

I wouldn't keep him around long if I didn't feed him well.

Fake food—I mean those patented substances chemically flavored and mechanically bulked out to kill the appetite and deceive the gut—is unnatural, almost immoral, a bane to good eating and good cooking.

The only time to eat diet food is while you are waiting for the steak to cook.

Usually, one's cooking is better than one thinks it is.

Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper. Everything can have drama if it's done right. Even a pancake.

I had my first French meal and I never got over it. It was just marvelous. We had oysters and a lovely dry white wine. And then we had one of those lovely scalloped dishes and the lovely, creamery buttery sauce. Then we had a roast duck and I don't know what else.

In France cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.

Once you have mastered a technique, you hardly need look at a recipe again and can take off on your own.

Any disaster is a learning process.

The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they're right if you love to be with them all the time.

Someone may offer you a freshly caught whole large fish, like a salmon or striped bass. Don't panic - take it!

The art of bread making can become a consuming hobby, and no matter how often and how many kinds of bread one has made, there always seems to be something new to learn.

In my generation, except for a few people who'd gone into banking or nursing or something like that, middle-class women didn't have careers. You were to marry and have children and be a nice mother. You didn't go out and do anything. I found that I got restless.

When I got to France I realized I didn't know very much about food at all. I'd never had a real cake. I'd had those cakes from cake mixes or the ones that have a lot of baking powder in them. A really good French cake doesn't have anything like that in it - it's all egg power.

Its so beautifully arranged on the plate you know someones fingers have been all over it.

The only time to eat diet food is while youre waiting for the steak to cook.

Its fun to get together and have something good to eat at least once a day. Thats what human life is all about enjoying things.

Being tall is an advantage, especially in business. People will always remember you. And if you're in a crowd, you'll always have some clean air to breathe.

The dinner hour is a sacred happy time when everyone should be together and relaxed.

With enough butter anything is good.

You must have discipline to have fun.

The perfect dressing is essential to the perfect salad, and I see no reason whatsoever for using a bottled dressing, which may have been sitting on the grocery shelf for weeks, even months - even years.

I still feel that French cooking is the most important in the world, one of the few that has rules. If you follow the rules, you can do pretty well.

In department stores, so much kitchen equipment is bought indiscriminately by people who just come in for men's underwear.

In the 1960s, you could eat anything you wanted, and of course, people were smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, and there was no talk about fat and anything like that, and butter and cream were rife. Those were lovely days for gastronomy, I must say.

The more you know, the more you can create. There's no end to imagination in the kitchen.

As we say in the American Institute of Wine and Food, small helpings, no seconds. A little bit of everything. No snacking. And have a good time.

Drama is very important in life You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper. Everything can have drama if its done right. Even a pancake.

The tomato hides its griefs. Internal damage is hard to spot.

Because I've done a lot of television, I'm sort of a generalist. I'm not a pastry cook, but I've had to learn a certain amount about it. I'm not a baker, though I've had to learn how to do it. I'm sort of a general cook.

The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know theyre right if you love to be with them all the time.

Because of media hype and woefully inadequate information, too many people nowadays are deathly afraid of their food, and what does fear of food do to the digestive system? I am sure that an unhappy or suspicious stomach, constricted and uneasy with worry, cannot digest properly.

There is nothing nicer than a kitchen really made for a cook. Things that are designed to be used always have an innate beauty.

How lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly.

It's fun to get together and have something good to eat at least once a day. That's what human life is all about - enjoying things.

No one is born a great cook one learns by doing.

You dont have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces just good food from fresh ingredients.

Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need.

It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers have been all over it.

People who are not interested in food always seem rather dry and unloving and don't have a real gusto for life.

In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.

I was lucky to marry Paul. He was a great inspiration, his enthusiasm about wine and food helped to shape my tastes, and his encouragement saw me through discouraging moments. I never would have had my career without Paul Child.

You learn to cook so that you don't have to be a slave to recipes. You get what's in season and you know what to do with it.

Until I discovered cooking I was never really interested in anything.

I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking youve got to have a what the hell attitude.