Quotes from Laurie Colwin

Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures.

We need time to defuse, to contemplate. Just as in sleep our brains relax and give us dreams, so at some time in the day we need to disconnect, reconnect, and look around us.

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, and the wisdom of cookbook writers.

I come from a coffee-loving family, and you can always tell when my sister and I have been around, because both of us collect all the dead coffee from everyone's morning cup, pour it over ice, and drink it. This is a disgusting habit.

Unlike some people, who love to go out, I love to stay home.

The best way to feel at ease in the kitchen is to learn at someone's knee.

I will never eat fish eyeballs, and I do not want to taste anything commonly kept as a house pet, but otherwise I am a cinch to feed.

Somehow or other, I always end up in a kitchen feeding a crowd.

The fact is that modern life has deprived us of life's one great luxury: time.

As everyone knows, there is only one way to fry chicken correctly. Unfortunately, most people think their method is best, but most people are wrong. Mine is the only right way, and on this subject I feel almost evangelical.

It is my opinion that Norman Rockwell and his ilk have done more to make already anxious people feel guilty than anyone else.

Friendship is not possible between two women, one of whom is very well dressed.

I put my lilies in front of Sam's plaque. I didn't want him to rest in peace. I wanted him to bounce around in death as he had in life, fearless, goofy, and fleet.

When he went to college he wrote me letters which I answered within four days. Each letter took at least five drafts before I thought it suitable to send to Cambridge.

she fought to keep the ugly, chaotic world at bay and to keep a sweet, pretty corner to live in.

How simple it could be! The answer to the problem of being anything was being it. How admirable Teddy was! From the ashes of his broken childhood he had formed a decision to be a cheerful person, a do-gooding scientific type with knowledge of English literature. That he had undercurrents of sadness as long and deep as a river was not the point. He had claimed a territory for himself and did not think too much about the complications.

She said that my good qualities were my bad qualities -- this I have come to realize is true of everyone. On the one hand, I was game, eager and perfectly ready to see what was in front of me. On the other hand, I had no sense of direction or destiny.

Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest.

Unhappiness isn't the worst thing in the world. It doesn't last forever and it usually teaches you something about yourself.

He was the soul of kindness and concern. The fact that he had talked to my father about this made me want to stab him. But I only said, "I'll talk to Patrick. This doesn't sit right with me.

Yes, there was a trick to it. You inherited your life, or you invented it. You figured out what you wanted life to be and then somehow or other you made it that way. Then, miracle of miracles, you liked it!

We polished off that breakfast like a pair of tigers and went through two pots of coffee. Charlie sat back in his chair, smoking a cigar. There was nothing specious in my happiness. It rang through me like a bell.

La ansiedad, pensó, era como una bandada de pájaros posados en un cable telefónico. Cuando se acercaba gente echaban a volar y cuando la gente se alejaba volvían dando saltitos

Polly había llorado tanto que se sentía deshidratada. El llanto juvenil es una cosa y el llanto adulto otra muy distinta. Las lágrimas de la juventud son limpiadoras, como las siestas o las duchas tonificantes. Una buena llorera hace que el joven que sufre sienta que se ha conseguido algo. Las lágrimas de la edad adulta dejan a la víctima seca y agotada. Dejan los ojos escocidos. Dejan a su paso un dolor bajo las costillas y en la frente.