Julia Child's Quotes

I still feel that French cooking is the most important in the world, one of the few that has rules. If you follow the rules, you can do pretty well.

I was never a spy. I was with the OSS organization. We had a number of women, but we were all office help.

I hate organized religion. I think you have to love thy neighbor as thyself. I think you have to pick your own God and be true to him. I always say 'him' rather than 'her.' Maybe it's because of my generation, but I don't like the idea of a female God. I see God as a benevolent male.

I think one of the terrible things today is that people have this deathly fear of food: fear of eggs, say, or fear of butter. Most doctors feel that you can have a little bit of everything.

Because I've done a lot of television, I'm sort of a generalist. I'm not a pastry cook, but I've had to learn a certain amount about it. I'm not a baker, though I've had to learn how to do it. I'm sort of a general cook.

I had my first French meal and I never got over it. It was just marvelous. We had oysters and a lovely dry white wine. And then we had one of those lovely scalloped dishes and the lovely, creamery buttery sauce. Then we had a roast duck and I don't know what else.

I was going to be a great woman novelist. Then the war came along and I think it's hard for young people today, don't you, to realize that when World War II happened we were dying to go and help our country.

So long as readers keep reading and my publishers keep publishing, I plan to keep on writing. I'd have to be an idiot to be burnt-out in this job.

The key to thrillers is vicarious pleasure.

The thriller is not a recent invention. It probably goes back to the dawn of storytelling.

The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.

There is nothing wrong with just telling the story.

We know we need civilization and laws and procedures, but isn't it frustrating? Wouldn't it be great if we could just do what we needed to do?

What do I miss about the UK? Sadly, almost nothing. Maybe the midnight sun, in June in the north. That's all.

Yeah, I am pretty sure of myself.

You mustn't fall in love with your own hero.

For men, as they get bogged down with responsibilities, commitments, bureaucracy, it is a fantasy just to think of shedding everything literally, walking away with nothing at all, and just hitting the road.

I do a little fact checking now and then. Other than that its impact is simply that email has revolutionized communication for me, and my website has built up a community of readers, which is a lot of fun.

I don't need validation, recognition or praise. What I need are facts and the facts are that one of my books gets sold, somewhere in the world, every second.

I had a brief theater background and loved the backstage world there's more backstage work in television, so I saw a job advertised and applied, and got it. That was back in 1977, when getting jobs was easy.

I had been coming to America very frequently for many, many years, so I had plenty of exposure - and maybe the best kind of exposure, because I think first impressions are very important. Maybe I notice stuff that is just subliminal to people who live here all the time.

I just felt from personal observation that there is nothing more dislocated or alienated than a lifelong military person trying to cope in civilian life. It's like two completely separate planets.

I love visiting LA. It's an endlessly fascinating city, and is, of course, America's entertainment capital. Each time I go, I fall in love with it all over again. That said, it's not the sort of place I'd want to live.

I wanted readers to be genuinely unsure as to whether she's telling the truth or lying. It meant making her partly sympathetic, and partly unsympathetic, which wasn't easy.

I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.'

I'm opposed to censorship of any kind, especially by government. But it's plain common sense that producers should target their product with some kind of sensitivity.

In principle if I could not have a home I wouldn't. But not having a home would be too difficult procedurally, going from hotel to hotel, the gap of three hours where you're hungry and tired.

It's a tough case and the first time Reacher needs to recruit somebody to help him out. He uses a woman he knew in the army she's a fascinating character.

Male authors always take care to make their heroes at least one inch taller than they are, and considerably more muscular. Just as female authors give their heroines better hair and slimmer thighs.

Practically any Western has a homesteader in trouble, and a mysterious rider shows up off the range, solves the problem over two or three days, and then rides off into the sunset.

She's a reflection of my fascination with the diversity of America she's totally normal in New York, but a freak in Texas. There are dozens of such clashes in America.

So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

The British regulatory system was revised, so that bigger profits were encouraged, which removed the option of big spending on programming. Quality just fell off a cliff, and all the old hands either left or were fired for being too expensive.

We would all love to walk up to someone and shoot them in the head, there's no doubt about that. We're too civilised to admit it, but we're happy to read about it.

You know, women are as promiscuous as men and yet, of course, people are inhibited from having an affair or a relationship because the real-world consequences are a drag.

I have the 'thing' worked out - the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.

Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

I like food, like any other guy, but it is not the main thing in my life. I can do without it.

I felt alienated by the experience and decided to stay away from corporate employment.

I have three desks. One empty for paperwork, one for the internet and email, and one for the writing computer.

A calm environment is for after I finish work.

All of us write wish fulfillment.

British crime stories tend to be very internal, psychological, claustrophobic, very limited in terms of geography.

For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

I grew up in Birmingham, where they made useful things and made them well.

I have a kind of old-fashioned, artisan approach.

I love Italian food but that's too generic a term for what's available now: you have to narrow it down to Tuscan, Sicilian, and so on.

I need a stimulating environment to write because my books are driven at 100 miles per hour at a time.

I think my books come out very visual, which is an obvious consequence.

I was fired from my television job, simple as that. Well, downsized, really, a classic 1990s situation.

I was in television drama, which is a first cousin to the movies, and I trust myself to make the right decisions.

I'd been a thriller reader all my life.

I'm not really into gourmet food; I'm the kind of guy who just stops by a place that looks good rather than heading for the restaurant of the moment.

I've discovered writers by reading books left in airplane seats and weird hotels.

It's always sad if anybody you know has a personal problem.

It's always tense when you move a character from a book to the screen. Always tense.

L.A. has a fantastic car scene and because the climate is so gentle, cars can last forever.

Most actors are small, anyway - at least compared to me.

My mother still calls me Jim and that is about it. Everyone else calls me Lee. My wife calls me whatever.

I can't listen to music while writing - any such distraction would have dreadful consequences.

I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.

The funny thing about writing is I think a lot of people assume that you're sitting in a garret with a quill pen for hour after hour.

There are some writers I think who love to go around and visit bookstores and just interact.

Writing on your own is, in a way, a very lonely profession. There's no one there to help you.

For me, writing never gets easier. It's always hard work. It doesn't matter how many words you wrote the day before, or how many novels you've completed in the last decade: every day you start fresh again with that same blank page, or that same blank screen.

My first job out of college was as an editorial assistant in a New York publishing house. Being an editorial assistant is the purgatory would-be editors must endure before they can ascend the ladder and begin acquiring books on their own. I spent a year filing paperwork, writing copy, and typing rejection letters.

Belief in oneself is one of the most important bricks in building any successful venture.

An effort made for the happiness of others lifts above ourselves.

The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word 'love'. It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.

Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kindly, sunshiny old age.

Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it; for such do always see that every cloud is an angel's face.

A reformer is one who sets forth cheerfully toward sure defeat.

But men never violate the laws of God without suffering the consequences, sooner or later.

Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do.

Home - that blessed word, which opens to the human heart the most perfect glimpse of Heaven, and helps to carry it thither, as on an angel's wings.

I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book.

It is right noble to fight with wickedness and wrong; the mistake is in supposing that spiritual evil can be overcome by physical means.

The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.

Every man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations which are the hardest of all others for him to bear; but they are so, simply because they are the very ones he most needs.