Julia Child

“How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex?”

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

“But my favorite remained the basic roast chicken. What a deceptively simple dish. I had come to believe that one can judge the quality of a cook by his or her roast chicken. Above all, it should taste like chicken: it should be so good that even a perfectly simple, buttery roast should be a delight.”

“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.”

“Once you have mastered a technique, you hardly need look at a recipe again and can take off on your own.”

“When I got to France I realized I didn't know very much about food at all. I'd never had a real cake. I'd had those cakes from cake mixes or the ones that have a lot of baking powder in them. A really good French cake doesn't have anything like that in it - it's all egg power.”

“Life itself is the proper binge.”

“I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give.”

“You'll never know everything about anything, especially something you love.”

“Usually, one's cooking is better than one thinks it is.”

“The art of bread making can become a consuming hobby, and no matter how often and how many kinds of bread one has made, there always seems to be something new to learn.”