Kate Christensen Quotes

In a family of all girls, I was always the 'boy' in my mind - the protector, the masculine one. No one would ever have to worry about me.

I've never been an outward rebel, but inside, I just rebel deeply.

Country ham is baked whole, usually with a glaze, sometimes studded with cloves, and served as the centerpiece of Christmas and Easter feasts.

Broccoli, when overboiled, produces a sulfuric stench that causes children to gag the instant they enter the house.

My favorite way to cook a clam is in chowder. I was a New Yorker for 20 years, and I always loved tomato-based, celery-heavy Manhattan chowders.

If there's a rift in the marriage - if someone feels neglected, frustrated, tempted by others, or unsure - then trouble can easily arise.

Everything that has ever happened to me is still all with me.

Odalisque, prompting us to call him Dingolion and Dandelingo

David Levi is a teacher as well as a chef, and, like most teachers, he loves to talk.

In the aftermath of a marriage, you feel helpless and hapless.

I think my blog is fairly circumspect and elliptical. I've written personal essays, but they are short and to the point: in and out, and that's that.

If you've got cockles, those nickel-size, heart-shaped mollusks, and you want to get fancy, steam them, then toss the meat in finely ground cornmeal.

Most of all, I love unfussy, unpretentious, simple food made with excellent ingredients. If I'm a snob, it's about quality, not cuisine.

I wrote my first story when I was six or seven.

Therapists have tremendous power over their vulnerable clients, and it is very easy to take advantage of this power.

It gives me immense pleasure to be trustworthy, faithful, and true - to have the kind of romantic bond that inspires this.

Chan Marshall has one of the most haunting, wrenching voices of any current singer, male or female.

Characters who don't suffer have no interest to me.

I think there's a part of my brain where food, language, and memory all intersect, and it's really powerful. I think I'm not alone in this.

The male muse is an unaccountably rare thing in art. Where does that leave female artists looking for inspiration?

It happened every single day in Brooklyn: awaken to fresh glory, fall asleep to blight and ruin.

I never liked dolls or played house. I read and wrote, climbed trees, collected rocks, rode my bike, and befriended boys, platonically.

I wrote my first novel in eighth grade for a boy named Kenny on whom I had an unrequited crush and who sat behind me in social studies.

Turning the blog into a book was extremely difficult, a tremendous amount of sustained, hard work. Blogging is easy; writing a book is difficult.

Iggy Pop is God, if God looked half that good with his shirt off.

It makes you vulnerable to win an award. It's nice to get the attention, but your neck is stuck out.

I wanted to write a food book, but I'm not a chef or an expert on culinary matters, to put it mildly.

Broccoli gets such a bad rap. This is perplexing to those of us who love that green, treelike, stalky vegetable.

Finding my way into a novel is always half the battle.

Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Under its influence, ordinary songs take on dimensions and powers, like emotional superheroes.

There's almost nothing you can't do with a cashew. Not only does it lend its nutty sweetness to savory dishes, it also gives desserts a deep richness.

A relative of poison ivy and poison sumac, the cashew contains the same rash-inducing chemicals, known as urushiols, as its kin.

The phrase 'blue plate special' has always been one of the homiest, coziest, most sweetly nostalgic phrases in the English language for me.

Let nothing human be foreign to me

I'm not a foodie - I'm an eater: I'm hungry.

In literature, older women are not often given center stage.

I've always written about adultery because it raises the question of transgression and trouble.

Thank God for my hobgoblin, small-minded consistency ...

I scrambled to pack my things, glad I owned so little.

She was fierce and opaque, and not breakable.

Often I choose characters who express not my best self, but the sides of me I haven't developed or haven't expressed.

To eat passionately is to allow the world in.

I procrastinate all morning. That's when I get my office work done and answer e-mails and see what's on the Internet and do laundry.

Food is not a means toward resolution. It can't cure heartbreak or solve untenable dilemmas.

I never see myself as writing satire. I think I write about people as they really are, without making them better or worse.

To taste fully is to live fully.

Ham is undoubtedly one of the most universally beloved of meats, at least in those parts of the world where it's not prohibited.

It's really hard for me, every day, to confront my writing. It never gets easier over time.

'Blue Plate Special' is the autobiography of my first half-century of life, with food as the subject.

I started reading G. K. Chesterton's 'The Man Who Was Thursday' on a subway ride, almost missed my stop, and walked home thumbing pages.