The Ariel Quigley Mysteries  and Accompanying Cookbooks

In the Kitchen

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

Samuel Johnson (1709–84), English author, lexicographer. Quoted in: Hester Piozzi, Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson (1786; repr. in Johnsonian Miscellanies, vol. 1, ed. by George Birkbeck Hill, 1897).

A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only true feminine & becoming viands.

Lord Byron (1788–1824), English poet. Letter, 25 Sept. 1812 (published in Byron’s Letters and Journals, vol. 2, ed. by Leslie A. Marchand, 1973–81).

Appetite comes with eating.

French Proverb.

Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale.

Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973), Italian fashion designer. Shocking Life, ch. 21 (1954).

Edible. Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914), U.S. author. The Devil’s Dictionary (1881–1906).*

He who eats alone chokes alone.

Arab Proverb. Quoted in: H. L. Mencken’s Dictionary of Quotations (1942).

If you’re going to America, bring your own food.

Fran Lebowitz (b. 1951), U.S. journalist. Social Studies, “Fran Lebowitz’s Travel Hints” (1981).

It is the mark of a mean, vulgar and ignoble spirit to dwell on the thought of food before meal times or worse to dwell on it afterwards, to discuss it and wallow in the remembered pleasures of every mouthful. Those whose minds dwell before dinner on the spit, and after on the dishes, are fit only to be scullions.

Saint Francis de Sales (1567–1622), French churchman, devotional writer. Introduction to the Devout Life, pt. 3, ch. 39 (1609).

Lunch is for wimps.

Oliver Stone (b. 1946), U.S. filmmaker. Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas), in the film Wall Street (written by Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser, directed by Stone, 1987). The character of Gekko was loosely based on convicted securities dealer Ivan Boesky

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941), British novelist. A Room of One’s Own, ch. 1 (1929).

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Anglo-Irish playwright, author. Mrs. Cheveley, in An Ideal Husband, act 1.

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

M. F. K. Fisher (b. 1908), U.S. culinary writer. An Alphabet for Gourmets, “A Is for Dining Alone” (1949).

The act of putting into your mouth what the earth has grown is perhaps your most direct interaction with the earth.

Frances Moore Lappé (b. 1944), U.S. ecologist, author. Diet For A Small Planet, pt. 1 (1971).

The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.

Samuel Butler (1835–1902), English author. Samuel Butler’s Notebooks (1951, p. 90).

The right diet directs sexual energy into the parts that matter.

Barbara Cartland (b. 1901), British novelist. Quoted in: Observer (London, 11 Jan. 1981).

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. Tanner, in Man and Superman, act 1.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80), French philosopher, author. Being and Nothingness, “Doing and Having,” sct. 3 (1943; tr. 1965).

Food=joy . . . guilt . . . anger . . . pain . . . nurturing . . . friendship . . . hatred . . . the way you look and feel. . .. Food=everything you can imagine.

Susan Powter, U.S. talk–show host. Food, Simon & Schuster (1995).