Laurie Colwin QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― Laurie Colwin

2 " At a certain point, memory begins to be a burden. "

― Laurie Colwin , Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object

3 " 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. "

― Laurie Colwin

4 " 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. "

― Laurie Colwin , A Big Storm Knocked It Over

5 " To be effortlessly yourself is a blessing, an ambrosia. It is like a few tiny little puffs of opium which lift you ever so slightly off the hard surface of the world. "

― Laurie Colwin , Goodbye Without Leaving

6 " These days any planned thing looked good to me. What heaven to have your work cut out for you, to be part of the Big Picture -- a picture you did not have to paint yourself. "

― Laurie Colwin , Goodbye Without Leaving

7 " 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. "

― Laurie Colwin , Family Happiness

8 " 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 "

― Laurie Colwin , Family Happiness

9 " How lucky, I thought, were people who had known from earliest childhood what they wanted to do. All the children in my grammar school, who said they wanted to be doctors, had grown up to become doctors. This was also the case apparently with firemen, veterinarians, songwriters, and race car drivers.

I had opted for a kind of pure experience, which, as Doo-Wah had pointed out, is not usually something you get paid for. I did not want to write a book about it. I did not want to write so much as an article. I wanted to be left alone with my experience and go on to the next thing, whatever that was. "

― Laurie Colwin , Goodbye Without Leaving

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

― Laurie Colwin

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

― Laurie Colwin , Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen

12 " Fulfillment leaves an empty space where longing used to be. "

― Laurie Colwin , The Lone Pilgrim

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

― Laurie Colwin , Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen

14 " 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. "

― Laurie Colwin

15 " 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. "

― Laurie Colwin , More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen

16 " 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. "

― Laurie Colwin , A Big Storm Knocked It Over

17 " 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. "

― Laurie Colwin

18 " Marriage, it turned out, was a series of small events. "

― Laurie Colwin , Happy All the Time

19 " Dinner alone is one of life’s pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest. People lie when you ask them what they eat when they are alone. A salad, they tell you. But when you persist, they confess to peanut butter and bacon sandwiches deep fried and eaten with hot sauce, or spaghetti with butter and grape jam. "

― Laurie Colwin , Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen

20 " I love the process of learning a thing. It’s doing a thing I find so boring. "

― Laurie Colwin , Family Happiness

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