THE ONSLAUGHT OF BAD NEWS GOT YOU DOWN? Us too. Even among good-natured foodies there’s plenty to get upset about—and let’s not even mention politics. We at Common Ground decided this is a good time to reset. We’ve paired some amusing quotes and images to remind us to smile and laugh—that food can be fun and celebratory and good medicine. “When you’re chewing on life’s gristle, don’t grumble, give a whistle . . . and always look on the bright side of life!” (Monty Python).
“What is patriotism but the love
of the food one ate as a child?”
—Lin Yutang
“Food should be fun.”
—Thomas Keller
“So long as you have food in your mouth, you
have solved all questions for the time being.”
—Franz Kafka
“The pistachio: it’s just like our politics.
When the two sides are divided, that’s
when the nuts come out.”
―Stephen Colbert
“Life is a combination of magic and pasta.”
—Federico Fellini
“Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.”
—Ludwig van Beethoven
“If you really want to make a friend,
go to someone’s house and eat with
him . . . the people who give you
their food give you their heart.”
—Cesar Chavez
“Someone has to stand up and
say the answer isn’t another
pill. The answer is spinach.”
—Bill Maher
“And of course the funniest food of all—kumquats.”
—George Carlin
“If more of us valued food and
cheer and song above hoarded gold,
it would be a merrier world.”
—J. R. R. Tolkien
“The greatest delight the fields and woods minister
is the suggestion of an occult relation between
man and the vegetable. I am not alone and
unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I love milk so much! I make a
point of drinking a glass of milk
every day. So now anyone who
did those milk ads with the milk
mustaches, they’re my heroes.”
—Natalie Portman
“How can you govern a country
which has 246 varieties of cheese?”
—Charles de Gaulle
“We should look for someone to eat
and drink with before looking for
something to eat and drink.”
—Epicurus
“Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what
you like and let the food fight it out inside.”
—Mark Twain
“He showed the words chocolate cake
to a group of Americans and recorded
their word associations. Guilt was the
top response. If that strikes you as
unexceptional, consider the response
of French eaters to the same prompt:
celebration.”
—Michael Pollan
“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking
about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen
spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”
—Alan Watts
“Let food be thy medicine
and medicine be thy food.”
―Hippocrates
“We must have a pie. Stress cannot
exist in the presence of a pie.”
—David Mamet
“Laughter is brightest in the place where food is.”
—Irish proverb
“Anybody who believes that the way to a man’s heart
is through his stomach flunked geography.”
—Robert Byrne
The reason life works at all is that not everyone
in your tribe is nuts on the same day.
―Anne Lamot
“Take counsel in wine, but
resolve afterwards in water.”
—Benjamin Franklin