“I'm getting stale. I always do this time of year. I keep my nose to the grindestone and put in long hours and rustle up good meals and do all the chores and run errands and get along with people -- and have a fine time doing it and enjoy life. Then I realize, bang, that I'm tired and I don't want to wait on my family for a while and I wish I could go away somewhere and have people wait on me hand and foot, and dress up and go to restaurants and the theater and act like a woman of the world. I feel as if I'd been swallowed up whole by all these powerful DeVotos and I'd like to be me for a while with somebody who never heard the name.”

“You have come nearer to mastering a good many aspects of cooking than anyone except a handful of great chefs, and some day it will pay off. I know it will. You will just have to go on working, and teaching, and getting around, and spreading the gospel until it does. (Avis DeVoto to Julia Child)”

“What in the world are we going to do with you?' Mrs. Ritter asked.I could think of a few things.Take it easy on me.Teach me different.Care about me just a little.So many times that year I wanted to shout,'It's not like I'm waking up in the morning and trying to mess up. I just don't get it!”

“My, I get so depressed after a poor meal; that's why I can never stay in England for more than a week.Julia to Avis”

“I like every part of growing older except what happens to your feet.Written by Avis DeVoto to Julia Child in "As Always, Julia”

“looks like i'm gonna do everything myselfmaybe i could use some help but hell,you want something done right you gotta do it yourselfmaybe life is up and down but my life's been (what?)till now i crawled up your butt somehow and that'swhen things got turned around i used to be alivenow i feel pathetic and now i get it what's done is done you just leave it aloneand don't regret it but sometimes,some things turn into dumb thingsand that's when you put your foot down.why did i have to go and meet somebody like you (like you)why did you have to go and hurt somebody like me (like me)how could you do somebody like that?(like that) hope you know that i'm never coming back (never coming back)”

“What would I like to get away from? Complexity. Anxiety. A feeling I've had my whole life that at any given time there's something I'm forgetting, some detail or chore, something that I'm supposed to be doing or should have already done. That nagging sensation - I get up with it, I go through the day with it, I go to sleep with it. When I was a kid, I had a habit of coming home from school on Friday afternoons and immediately doing my homework. So I'd wake up on Saturday morning with this wonderful sensation, a clean, open feeling of relief and possibility and calm. There'd be nothing I had to do. Those Saturday mornings, they were a taste of real freedom that I've hardly ever experienced as an adult. I never wake up in Elmsford with the feeling that I've done my homework.”