M.F.K. Fisher Quotes

Fatherhood will put a man through a lot, but it's a tremendous job, the best in the world - even better than playing basketball.

I saved Latin. What did you ever do?

As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don't.

Instant gratification takes too long.

since we must eat to live, we might as well do it with both grace and gusto.

Thus, our national circulating medium is now at the mercy of loan transactions of banks, which lend, not money, but promises to supply money they do not possess

People see me and they squeal like tropical birds or seals stranded on the beach.

Sharing our meals should be a joyful and a trustful act, rather than the cursory fulfillment of our social obligations.

There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash.

Everything is negotiable. Whether or not the negotiation is easy is another thing.

A well-made Martini or Gibson, correctly chilled and nicely served, has been more often my true friend than any two-legged creature.

Most bereaved souls crave nourishment more tangible than prayers: they want a steak.

Romantic love is an obsession. It possesses you. You lose your sense of self. You can’t stop thinking about another human being.

Any kind of novelty or excitement drives up dopamine in the brain, and dopamine is associated with romantic love.

How much there is I want to do! I always feel that I haven't time to accomplish what I wish. I want to read much. I wanted to write a great deal. I want to make money.

Mania starts off fun, not sleeping for days, keeping company with your brain, which has become a wonderful computer, showing 24 TV channels all about you. That goes horribly wrong after awhile.

The statistician cannot excuse himself from the duty of getting his head clear on the principles of scientific inference, but equally no other thinking man can avoid a like obligation.

Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.

Faith does not mean credulity...

The happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend on piety, religion, and morality.

You know, it's a very sexist society, Indonesia.

I am vegetarian, though, and so is my family.

A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.

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.

Almost every person has something secret he likes to eat.

What worries me is, what if this guy is really the one for me and I just haven't had enough therapy yet for me to be comfortable with having found him.

The world of manic depression is a world of bad judgment calls.

The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

The main characteristics of romantic love are craving: an intense craving to be with a particular person, not just sexually, but emotionally.

One martini is just right. Two martinis are too many. Three martinis are never enough.

I have two moods. One is Roy, rollicking Roy, the wild ride of a mood. And Pam, sediment Pam, who stands on the shore and sobs... Sometimes the tide is in, sometimes it's out.

I was into pain reduction and mind expansion, but what I've ended up with is pain expansion and mind reduction.

Be extra careful when buying into companies and industries that are the current darlings of the financial community.

A world without love is a deadly place.

A writing cook and a cooking writer must be bold at the desk as well as the stove.

My inner world seems largely to consist of three rotating emotions: embarrassment, rage, and tension. Sometimes I feel excited, but I think that's just positive tension.

[the framers of the Constitution] intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.

Central heating, French rubber goods and cookbooks are three amazing proofs of man's ingenuity in transforming necessity into art, and, of these, cookbooks are perhaps most lastingly delightful.

The end of the decline of the Stock Market will probably not be long, only a few more days at most.

There's no room for demons when you're self-possessed.

I always think of Meryl [Streep] for everything now. There really aren't many actresses around who are truly lucid the way she is.

My extroversion is a way of managing my introversion.

History is one damn thing after another.

Sometimes we fall in love with somebody who will probably never love us, for reasons having nothing to do with us but with their own mindset, their chemistry.

No man can be a sound lawyer in this land who is not well read in the ethics of Moses and the virtues of Jesus.

I don't think Christmas is necessarily about things. It's about being good to one another, it's about the Christian ethic, it's about kindness.

He doesn't move his face when he talks. His eyes are like shark eyes. Dead.

There is always need for good foster parents, people who have room in their homes, the openhearted people.

We're not very dangerous animals; we don't have a horn like a rhino or quills like a porcupine.

The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people.