Cooking quotes
1.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside cooking — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I am afraid of getting older … I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day—spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free…. I want, I want to think, to be omniscient…. I think I would like to call myself ‘The girl who wanted to be God."
"Cooking is one failure after another, and that's how you finally learn."
"I never see any home cooking - all I get is fancy stuff."
"Ketchup left overnight on dinner plates has a longer half-life than radioactive waste."
"I would stand transfixed before the windows of the confectioners' shops, fascinated by the luminous sparkle of candied fruits, the cloudy lustre of jellies, the kaleidoscope inflorescence of acidulated fruit drops - red, green, orange, violet: I coveted the colours themselves as much as the pleasure they promised me."
"Some pale, hueless flicker of sensitivity is in me. God, must I lose it in cooking scrambled eggs for a man."
"...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out."
"The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream."
"Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect!"
"He who knows even how to prepare a smoke properly, knows also how to meditate. And he who cannot cook well cannot be a perfect sannyasin. Unless cooking is performed with a pure mind and concentration, the food is not palatable."
"Marriage is survived just on the basis of ordinary etiquette, day in and day out. Also cooking together helps a lot."
"Eating is the secret to good cooking."
"The more you know, the more you can create. There's no end to imagination in the kitchen."
"Nothing is more useful than wine for strengthening the body and also more detrimental to our pleasure if moderation be lacking."
"Preach not to others what they should eat, but eat as becomes you and be silent."
"It's food too fine for angels, yet come, take and eat thy fill!"
"Cooking is an observation-based process that you can't do if you're so completely focused on a recipe."
"But I always felt that I'd rather be provincial hot-tamale than soup without seasoning."
"To cook your hare you must first catch it."
"Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother."
