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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“There is nothing like soup. It is by nature eccentric: no two are ever alike, unless of course you get your soup in a can.”

“To feel safe and warm on a cold wet night, all you really need is soup.”

“For the socially timid, the kitchen is the place to be. At least, it is a place to start.”

“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.”

“The old days were slower. People buttered their bread without guilt and sat down to dinner en famille.”

“Fulfillment leaves an empty space where longing used to be.”

“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.”