M. F. K. Fisher Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight”
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“First we eat, then we do everything else.”
-- M. F. K. Fisher -
“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.”
-- M. F. K. FisherSource : The Gastronomical Me foreword (1943).
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“There is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel, that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.”
-- M. F. K. Fisher -
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“Almost every person has something secret he likes to eat.”
-- M. F. K. FisherSource : Joan Reardon, M.F.K. Fisher (2014). “The Art of Eating”, p.61, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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“In spite of all the talk and study about our next years, all the silent ponderings about what lies within them...it seems plain to us that many things are wrong in the present ones that can be, must be, changed. Our texture of belief has great holes in it. Our pattern lacks pieces.”
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“Cheese has always been a food that both sophisticated and simple humans love.”
-- M. F. K. Fisher -
“No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread.”
-- M. F. K. Fisher -
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“Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures.”
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“Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat - and drink! - with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.”
-- M. F. K. FisherSource : Joan Reardon, M.F.K. Fisher (2014). “The Art of Eating”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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“I sat in the gradually chilling room, thinking of my whole past the way a drowning man is supposed to, and it seemed part of the present, part of the gray cold and the beggar woman without a face and the moulting birds frozen to their own filth in the Orangerie. I know now I was in the throes of some small glandular crisis, a sublimated bilious attack, a flick from the whip of melancholia, but then it was terrifying...nameless....”
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“Or you can broil the meat, fry the onions, stew the garlic in the red wine...and ask me to supper. I'll not care, really, even if your nose is a little shiny, so long as you are self-possessed and sure that wolf or no wolf, your mind is your own and your heart is another's and therefore in the right place.”
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“Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.”
-- M. F. K. FisherSource : 1949 An Alphabet for Gourmets,'A Is for Dining Alone'.
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“When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.”
-- M. F. K. FisherSource : Joan Reardon, M.F.K. Fisher (2014). “The Art of Eating”, p.223, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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“I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.”
-- M. F. K. FisherSource : M. F. K. Fisher, Joan Reardon (2004). “The Art of Eating”, p.402, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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“When shall we live if not now?”
-- M. F. K. FisherSource : Joan Reardon, M.F.K. Fisher (2014). “The Art of Eating”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.”
-- M. F. K. Fisher -
“...for me there is too little of life to spend most of it forcing myself into detachment from it.”
-- M. F. K. Fisher -
“People ask me: "Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?" . . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.”
-- M. F. K. Fisher -
“You may feel that you have eaten too much...But this pastry is like feathers - it is like snow. It is in fact good for you, a digestive!”
-- M. F. K. Fisher -
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“There are may of us who cannot but feel dismal about the future of various cultures. Often it is hard not to agree that we are becoming culinary nitwits, dependent upon fast foods and mass kitchens and megavitamins for our basically rotten nourishment.”
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“It is impossible to think of any good meal, no matter how plain or elegant, without soup or bread in it”
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“For me, a plain baked potato is the most delicious one....It is soothing and enough.”
-- M. F. K. Fisher -
“All men are hungry. They always have been. They must eat, and when they deny themselves the pleasures of carrying out that need, they are cutting off part of their possible fullness, their natural realization of life, whether they are rich or poor.”
-- M. F. K. FisherSource : Joan Reardon, M.F.K. Fisher (2014). “The Art of Eating”, p.357, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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“It is a curious fact that no man likes to call himself a glutton, and yet each of us has in him a trace of gluttony, potential or actual. I cannot believe that there exists a single coherent human being who will not confess, at least to himself, that once or twice he has stuffed himself to bursting point on anything from quail financiere to flapjacks, for no other reason than the beastlike satisfaction of his belly.”
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“Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg until it is broken.”
-- M. F. K. FisherSource : Joan Reardon, M.F.K. Fisher (2014). “The Art of Eating”, p.264, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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“It is puzzling to me that otherwise sensitive people develop a real docility about the obvious necessity of eating, at least once a day, in order to stay alive. Often they lose their primal enjoyment of flavors and odors and textures to the point of complete unawareness. And if ever they question this progressive numbing-off, they shrug helplessly in the face of mediocrity everywhere. Bit by bit, hour by hour, they say, we are being forced to accept the not-so-good as the best, since there is little that is even good to compare it with.”
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“A pleasant aperitif, as well as a good chaser for a short quick whiskey, as well again for a fine supper drink, is beer.”
-- M. F. K. Fisher -
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“. . . word-sniffing . . . is an addiction, like glue -- or snow -- sniffing in a somewhat less destructive way, physically if not economically. . . . As an addict, I am almost guiltily interested in converts to my own illness . . .”
-- M. F. K. Fisher -
“Dictionaries are always fun, but not always reassuring.”
-- M. F. K. Fisher
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