Quotes & Sayings About Dinner Parties

At dinner parties I sit below the salt now. There are a lot of interesting people there. — Donald T. Regan

Married life must agree with you."

"Oh, yes," she replied. "It's been what every girl dreams of, what with all the gossip and scandal, and the awkward dinner parties with family members who flirt with one's new husband. No to mention capped off by a nice little break-in and attempted kidnapping. Truly, if I'd known it was going to be this much fun, I would have married a long time ago. — Vanessa Kelly

The perpetually indignant elites inhabited a self-contained echo chamber of boardrooms, golf clubs, dinner parties and private media. They thought they were Venezuela. They could not see how their hysterics repelled and radicalised less-privileged compatriots. Thus they kept lunging and, in election after election, would keep losing. — Rory Carroll

Gunner shook his head; he wasn't in the mood. He stared down at his bottle as he spoke. "Yeah, and what if I do go after it and what if I find no one, and I'm alone for the next sixty years? What then? Huh? Friends and family will get married. I'll be stuck buying gifts. Years pass: children, birthday parties. At dinner parties, I'll be odd man out, forcing people to arrange five chairs around a table instead of four or six. Or, okay, let's say maybe twenty years down the line I meet someone nice and I've already given up on ever finding true love. Let's say the girl is a few pounds overweight, has fizzy hair and an annoying laugh, but at this point, I'm also a few pounds overweight and my hair is thinning and my laughter is annoying. Maybe then the two of us get married, and both our groups of friends will say, 'See I told you that you'd find true love. It just took a while.' And we'll smile, but we'll both know it's a lie-- — Michael Anthony

One evening, on being quite occupied by the state of the struffoli, I seated the Duca di San Orvieta with the Duchessa opposite, and between two of his mistresses. They fought over his attentions, above the table and below, like squid intent on extracting a mollusc from its shell. The poor man was so distracted that he hardly ate a bite. The Duchessa's words to me afterwards were not lacking in picturesque vividness. — Emmanuelle De Maupassant

When museums are built these days, architects, directors, and trustees seem most concerned about social space: places to have parties, eat dinner, wine-and-dine donors. Sure, these are important these days - museums have to bring in money - but they gobble up space and push the art itself far away from the entrance. — Jerry Saltz

It's a fate worse than death to spend eternity in harness, serving as Lilly Hellman's zombie, brought back to life at dinner parties. — Chuck Palahniuk

It is very vulgar to talk about one's own business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then only at dinner parties. — Oscar Wilde

Some people play the piano, some do Sudoku, some watch television, some people go out to dinner parties. I write books. — Boris Johnson

Because of the earlier loss of the two elder siblings, my brother and I lived a very pampered and protected life. Nursemaids kept constant watch. With my parents busy at dinner parties and social events, we only met them as if for a daily royal audience. — Charles K. Kao

Food became, for dinner parties in the sixties, what abstract expressionism had been in the fifties. — Nora Ephron

Think about it. We are fed in the Eucharist, by our mothers when we are infants, by our parents as children, by friends at dinner parties, by a lover when we feast on one another's bodies ... and on occasion, on one another's souls. Don't you want me to feed you? You don't want to feast on my body, but at least feast on my cake.
Gabriel chuckled. When Julia didn't answer, he turned his full attention to his dessert. She scowled. If he thought this disgusting display of food porn was going to get her attention and maybe make her a little hot and bothered until she was putty in his hands ...
... he was right. — Sylvain Reynard

I'm an avid cook. Brazilian, some Italian, a little French. And I often throw dinner parties. — Morena Baccarin

I was so lucky that I got to meet certain people. It came through Roddy McDowall, who had become a photographer and would do these portraits of celebrities. Then he would get another well-known person to write a thing. He photographed me when I was 15 or 16, and he got Jason Robards to write the thing because he was sort of my mentor. And Roddy would invite me to these dinner parties that were insane. Like, Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen O'Hara and people that were just crazy. I still can't really believe that I met them. — Winona Ryder

In California, of course, they never break up couples at dinner for fear of what might happen if someone's husband were seated next to someone else's very young girlfriend. But dinners with couples seated next to one another are always deadly dull, which is why there are almost no good dinner parties in the entire state of California. — Nora Ephron

I can be super reclusive and hermetic, and then I can be in California and host dinner parties and drink wine. It's all me. — Lia Ices

There was a time when going out to parties and dinner parties and clubs was an exciting thing to do. I'd wake up in the morning and immediately think, 'Now what am I doing tonight?' Now I'd be more likely to reach for a book. — Gina Bellman

I still have the shirt I wore my first time on Johnny Carson's show. Only now I use it as a tablecloth at dinner parties. It was very blousy. — Ellen DeGeneres

I don't go to premieres. I don't go to parties. I don't covet the Oscar. I don't want any of that. I don't go out. I just have dinner at home every night with my kids. Being famous, that's a whole other career. And I haven't got any energy for it. — Gary Oldman

I have two garden parties a year to avoid going out to dinner. — Tom Stoppard

I've been having these dinner parties at my house in L.A. for years that turn into charades parties. I'm so good at breaking stuff down into syllables and sounds. If I were to be doing anything else besides being an actor, I would be a professional charades player. I'm not sure if it exists, but if it didn't, I'll create it. — Wilson Bethel

There are dinner parties ruined by guests, and there are dinner parties ruined by hosts, and then there are dinner parties when everyone contributes to the disaster. — Julie Powell

I'm sick of the ignorance that lack of funding has generated, of the fathers who apporach me at dinner parties with their four-year-old girls clasped to their pant legs and say, "Yeah, but studies say kids can buy drugs more easily than they can buy alcohol." To which I always respond, "I guess that means you keep heroin in your liquor cabinet? — Koren Zailckas

I think Ian McKellen made it all happen, because he used to throw dinner parties and invite everyone over. — Shawn Ashmore

I love the English way, which is not as capitalistic as it is in America. People don't talk about work and money. They talk about interesting things at dinner parties. — Gwyneth Paltrow

For a very long time I worked and worked and worked, and then I looked up one day and all my friends were married with children. These married-with-children people were still my friends, but they'd become part of a community I wasn't in, a club I didn't belong to. Socially, their lives had completely changed, and they were busy. Their attention had turned to carpools and birthday parties and school tuition, and I was playing catch-up:"Wait, so we don't have game night anymore? You guys, who's free for dinner Saturday? Oh, absolutely no one? — Lauren Graham

I knew David Benioff a bit socially. I knew his wife, Amanda Peet. He's a smart guy, so I always sought him out at dinner parties. — Peter Dinklage

I sat back down on the couch, between my mom and my dad, and my dad put his arm around me, and we stayed there like that, quiet on the couch together, for a long time, until it seemed okay to turn on the TV, and then we ate artichoke dip for dinner and watched the History Channel, and as going-away parties go, it certainly could have been worse. — John Green

We're like little kids. We are little kids, but don't tell us that - we're having a fantastic time. We have our little house, and live our little life. We are the perfect young husband and wife. We have nonstop dinner parties - the glorious food, the fabulous friends, the gallons of wine. I sometimes feel as if I've raced off a cliff and am spinning my legs in midair, like Wile E. Coyote. But I'm fine. It's fine. It's all going to be fine. Crazy people don't have dinner parties, do they? No. — Marya Hornbacher

In the morn when they woke,
it was Halloween Day.
There was bobbing for apples
and rides in the hay.
There were costume parties,
and games to be played.
Cupcakes and candy and,
of course, a parade!
After dinner was served,
and the kids were done eating,
it was finally time
to go trick-or-treating!
Moms re-painted faces,
and straightened clown hats,
put wings back on fairies,
angels, and bats.
Jack-o-lanterns were set
out on porches with care.
Their grins seemed to say,
"Knock if you dare. — Natasha Wing

The South has a way of worshipping appearances - the suburbs are all about presentation and amazing flowers and a beautiful yard and dinner parties that impress people and having the Christmas lights just right. — Paul Downs Colaizzo

That was the old Ellen Gulden, the girl who would walk over her mother in golf shoes, who scared students away from writing seminars, who started work on Monday after graduating from Harvard with honors on a Thursday, who loved the moments in the office when she would look out at the impenetrable black of the East River, starred with the reflected lights of Queens, with only the cleaning crew for company, and think of her various superiors out at dinner parties and restaurants and her various similars out at downtown clubs or cheap but authentic places in Chinatown and say to herself, 'I'm getting ahead.' That Ellen Gulden, the one her boss suspected of using the dying-mother ploy to get more money or a better job title, would have covered every inch of [this datebook] with the frantic scribble of unexamined ambition. — Anna Quindlen

I really like to cook and have dinner parties and I like to clean, it really clears my head and it makes me feel good to keep my home as a comfortable place. — Jenny Slate

Dinner parties are still highly popular, and I believe they always will be. — Yotam Ottolenghi

As much as I would love to be a person that goes to parties and has a couple of drinks and has a nice time, that doesn't work for me. I'd just rather sit at home and read, or go out to dinner with someone, or talk to someone I love, or talk to somebody that makes me laugh. — Daniel Radcliffe

I might wear a dinner jacket once a year to our Oscar party - that's a big thing - but I don't go to parties. I'm social but I'm not a socialite person. — Graydon Carter

Funny you mention my dinner parties when I have just suggested that inviting close friends over to share a meal with candlelight and wine at your table could be a form of religious experience for some people. To me it's a form of sacrament. — Sally Quinn

Pierre, who knew she was very stupid, sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her evenings and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy were discussed. At — Leo Tolstoy

But the important thing is that I don't do anything else. I avoid social life normally associated with publishing. I don't go to the cocktail parties, I don't give or go to dinner parties. I need that time in the evening because I can do a tremendous amount of work then. And I can concentrate. When I sit down to write I never brood. I have so many other things to do, with my children and teaching, that I can't afford it ... — Toni Morrison

If the '80s were about Christian Lacroix ball gowns, the '90s give us wealthy women who either go to work or pretend to, and want office suits or slip dresses they can wear to dinner parties - ergo, the minimalism of Prada, Jil Sander, and others. But this is minimalism that comes at maximal prices. — Michael Shnayerson

Dinner-parties bore us because our imagination is absent, and reading interests us because it is keeping us company. — Marcel Proust

I just don't get invited to the same dinner parties I used to like to go to. — Ron Silver

At dinner parties other women's husbands and boyfriends hold my gaze a bit longer than all but the most lecherous American men would dare. I never find out whether these approaches might lead to something more, but they don't have to. Flirting with someone else's partner isn't a betrayal of your spouse or a gateway to extramarital sex. It's a harmless way to have fun. — Pamela Druckerman

Ottolenghi sells lots of delicious sweet things, but my daily addiction is their unbelievable dark chocolate salted caramel biscuits. They're the best things in the world - I go through half a packet every night. I bring them out after pudding at dinner parties. — Trinny Woodall

Lately it has become more and more difficult to attend dinner parties without the evening ending in gunfire or tapioca ... — Daniel Handler

Journalists are quite surprised outside their dinner parties when they hear where I live. 'Van Nuys? You still live there?' It is like saying you're from Alabama. — Sandra Tsing Loh

For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it's time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward. — Erma Bombeck

People should buy a house to live in, not as an investment. Property has become such a national obsession - it was the primary subject at dinner parties and how many television shows were dedicated to the market. It's not good for the economy. — Peter Hargreaves

Misery loves company which is ironic because it rarely throws dinner parties. — Dov Davidoff

I've always wanted to be an expert on tadpoles; I've always fancied being a tadpole expert. It's a wonderful life if you become an experty tadpoleous, as they are known in the trade. You get invited out to all the smart parties and social gatherings. When smart people are making out their lists for the dinner parties, they say, 'Now, who can we have to make up the ten? A tadpole expert would be very nice. He could sit next to Lady Sonia. — Peter Cook

I don't have dinner parties - I eat my dinner in bed. — Hugh Hefner

In every civilization, life grows easier. Men grow lazier in consequence. We have a picture of what happened to the individual Greek. (I cannot look at history, or at any human action, except as I look at the individual.) The Greeks had good food, good witty talk, pleasant dinner parties; and they were content. When the individual man had reached that condition in Athens, when the thought not of giving to the state but of what the state could give to him, Athens' freedom was doomed. — Edith Hamilton

I feel like fashion was much more exclusive. There weren't as many parties. There weren't as many social gatherings. It wasn't required that designers have events to lure customers or editors or any of that - it was about a show. If there was a dinner or a party, people would go out after. New York nightlife was about late nights and dancing. — Roopal Patel

The point is, whether or not they show it at dinner parties, writers learn, by a necessity of their trade, to be the sharpest of observers. — John Gardner

I am not someone who likes cocktail parties or large dinner parties, but I have to attend them often. I much prefer very small dinners with close friends. — Tom Ford

[On the socialites in New York in the Nineties who devoted themselves to politics, charities, and other volunteer work:] I never knew but one woman who devoted her life exclusively to the social game. She ended her days arranging dinner parties with paper dolls, a breakdown pitiful to watch. — Margaret Case Harriman

You know, the act of feeding someone is the ultimate act of care and affection ... sharing yourself with someone else through food." He held another mouthful of cake under her nose. "Think about it. We are fed in the Eucharist, by our mothers when we are infants, by our parents as children, by friends at dinner parties, by a lover when we feast on one another's bodies ... and on occasion, on another's souls. — Sylvain Reynard

Gavin turned us to face Josh, a satisfied grin springing up when he noticed the condition of Josh's clothes.
"Thanks for the last-minute invitation, man." Josh chuckled, patting Gavin on the shoulder. "Shall I do the honors, Mr. Suave?"
"Sure thing, Frodo Baggins. By the way, I hear the Shire has impeccable dinner parties this time of year." The corners of Gavin's lips twitched and his eyebrows shot up as he gestured to a food stain of some sort near the collar of Josh's white shirt.
Josh's chin shot down to follow Gavin's amusement and he quickly tried to wipe away the crumbs. "Yeah, well ... you know how we hobbits like to eat. — Rachael Wade

Her address book confirmed it, the pages inhabited equally by the living and the dead ... Each name called up raucous dinner parties and gin-and-tonics on sunny patios, lazy Saturday afternoons at the swim club, station wagons filled with noisy boys in polyester baseball uniforms. — Stewart O'Nan

One looks back to what was called a 'wine-party' with a sort of wonder. Thirty lads round a table covered with bad sweetmeats, drinking bad wines, telling bad stories, singing bad songs over and over again. Milk punch-- smoking--ghastly headache-- frightful spectacle of dessert-table next morning, and smell of tobacco--your guardian, the clergyman, dropping in, in the midst of this--expecting to find you deep in Algebra, and discovering the Gyp administering soda-water.

There were young men who despised the lads who indulged in the coarse hospitalities of wine-parties, who prided themselves in giving recherche little French dinners. Both wine-party-givers and dinner-givers were Snobs. — William Makepeace Thackeray

It is a fact of life that people give dinner parties, and when they invite you, you have to turn around and invite them back. Often they retaliate by inviting you again, and you must then extend another invitation. Back and forth you go, like Ping-Pong balls, and what you end up with is called social life. — Laurie Colwin

It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties. — John Wanamaker

When I look at the Abnegation lifestyle as an outsider, I think it's beautiful. When I watch my family move in harmony; when we go to dinner parties and everyone cleans together afterward without having to be asked; when I see Caleb help strangers carry their groceries, I fall in love with this life all over again. — Veronica Roth

Understand that to achieve success in your efforts, you must try to be reliable and on time for everything -your job, dinner parties, doctor appointments- everything. — Dianna DeLonzor

So when introverts assume the observer role, as when they write novels, or contemplate unified field theory- or fall quiet at dinner parties- they're not demonstrating a failure or a lack of energy. They're simply doing what they're constitutionally suited for (237). — Susan Cain

It all goes so fast, she thought. We dole out our lives in dinner parties and plane flights, and it's over before we know it. We lose everyone we love, if they don't lose us first, and every single thing we do is intended to distract us from that reality. — Armistead Maupin

Actually, I don't even like parties. I would much prefer a room with four friends who sit around and have dinner. I detest nightclubs. And I don't like places where the noise is so loud you can't talk to people. — Salman Rushdie

I don't go on lunch dates with friends. I hear about people having dinner parties, but I never do that. I'm not really human. — Fiona Apple

My mother was addicted to being rich, to servants and unlimited charge accounts, to giving lavish dinner parties, to taking frequent first-class trips to Europe. So one might say she was tormented by withdrawal symptoms all through the Great Depression. She was acculturated! Acculturated persons are those who find that they are no longer treated as the sort of people they thought they were, because the outside world has changed. An economic misfortune or a new technology, or being conquered by another country or political faction, can do that to people quicker than you can say "Jack Robinson." As Trout wrote in his "An American Family Marooned on the Planet Pluto": "Nothing wrecks any kind of love more effectively than the discovery that your previously acceptable behavior has become ridiculous." He said in conversation at the 2001 clambake: "If I hadn't learned how to live without a culture and a society, acculturation would have broken my heart a thousand times." *** — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

In my experience, writers tend to be really good at the inside of their own heads and imaginary people, and a lot less good at the stuff going on outside, which means that quite often if you flirt with us we will completely fail to notice, leaving everybody involved slightly uncomfortable and more than slightly unlaid.
So I would suggest that any attempted seduction of a writer would probably go a great deal easier for all parties if you sent them a cheerful note saying "YOU ARE INVITED TO A SEDUCTION: Please come to dinner on Friday Night, Wear the kind of clothes you would like to be seduced in."
And alcohol may help, too. Or kissing. Many writers figure out that they're being seduced or flirted with if someone is actually kissing them. — Neil Gaiman

Everyone acknowledges that dinner parties are equally dull in London and Paris, in Calcutta and in New York, unless the next neighbour happens to be peculiarly agreeable. — Isabella Bird

One summer when Carol was attending day camp, Greta had an affair with a man named Mel Carter. He was an Eastern publicity representative for a film studio, and often instructed dinner parties to which we went in those days with accounts of the movies' coming of age. 'We have a picture coming up,' he said once, 'in which a character says "son of a bitch." Lots of exciting things are happening. Still, it's only a beginning. Much remains to be done. — Peter De Vries

Well let's face it, who on earth besides antique dealers and gay couples actually still give dinner parties? — Nigel Slater

Mixed dinner parties of ladies and gentlemenare very rare, which is a great defect in the society; not only as depriving themof the most social and hospitable manner of meeting, but as leading to frequent dinner parties of gentlemen without ladies, which certainly does not conduce to refinement. — Frances Trollope

After all, poison is only contagious at dinner parties. — Scott Lynch

However grand our sacramental downsittings and updressings may be, they remain only and precisely sacraments: real presences, under particular signs, of the happier order that faith can discover under any and all signs. They're a bit like the church. As long as we see them as an earnest of the kingdom, they're all right; when we put on airs and act as if they were the kingdom itself, they look just silly. — Robert Farrar Capon

Unfiltered Camels, and box of watercolor paints (and artist's paycheck) - from him we learned how to create beauty where none exists, how to be generous beyond our means, how to change a small corner of the world just by making a little dinner for a few friends. From him we learned how to make and give luminous parties. — Gabrielle Hamilton

When people at dinner parties ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal. — Barack Obama

He was known for throwing elaborate parties, known as "freak dinners" - perhaps most notably the "Gondola Party" he hosted in 1905 at the Savoy Hotel in London, where he filled the hotel's courtyard with water, dressed everyone in Venetian garb, and served dinner to guests aboard a giant gondola. Lest this be deemed insufficient, he arranged to have a birthday cake - five feet tall - brought in on the back of a baby elephant. — Erik Larson

The most unforgettable dinner parties happened when guests said unexpected, and potentially offensive, things. The — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

In crises of this sort the Dyckmanns had usually found it effective to stare into space, encouraging the long pause that might fetch the witty words, 'Well, dear, we must go.' But the Bairds were on an entirely different wavelength, and this was the fault of the Dyckmanns. With the removal of the bottles it had been the mutual impulse of the Bairds to shoot out the door, but their second thought was that they must not... (from "Dinner on the Rocks" (1954) by Dawn Powell) — Diana Secker Tesdell

I really don't understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years. — John Cole

Today, I show you Lake Como even though I don't know fuck all about Lake Como; I do know how to drive a boat. Tonight, no parties, no friends, no nothing. You, me, dinner. Later tonight, just you and me. You with me?"
"I'm with you," I whispered, and I was with him. So with him. — Kristen Ashley

You can imagine the kind of dinner parties I had to go to at a young age ... pretty dull. — Prince Harry

Outside the window, people threw dinner parties. — Olivia Laing

Bike lanes - I put that now in the category of things you shouldn't discuss at dinner parties, right? It used to be money and politics and religion. Now, in New York, you should add bike lanes. — Christine Quinn

As a young boy, Charles Darwin made friends easily but preferred to spend his time taking long, solitary nature walks. (As an adult he was no different. "My dear Mr. Babbage," he wrote to the famous mathematician who had invited him to a dinner party, "I am very much obliged to you for sending me cards for your parties, but I am afraid of accepting them, for I should meet some people there, to whom I have sworn by all the saints in Heaven, I never go out.") — Susan Cain

My whole life has been a very communal experience; growing up in a house full of happy hippies, having dinner parties three days a week, and going to Christiania, I was constantly surrounded by people celebrating community. If you look at the films I've done, they all share that theme. — Thomas Vinterberg

If you want to keep people happy, just keep the food and entertainment rolling. — E.A. Bucchianeri

People who live entirely by the fertility of their imaginations are fascinating, brilliant and often charming, but they should be sat next to at dinner parties, not lived with. — Scottie Fitzgerald Smith

Two nights later, she was out with some work friends at a blue-plate hipster joint near the L train when she spotted Doug. He had a heavy beard and wore overalls. She liked his eyes, the way they crinkled when he smiled. When he came up to the bar for another pitcher, she struck up a conversation. He told her he was a writer who avoided writing by hosting elaborate dinner parties. His apartment was full of obscure food prep machinery, vintage pasta rollers and a three-hundred-pound cappuccino machine he'd rebuilt screw by screw. — Noah Hawley

Which just goes to show, I guess, that dinner parties are like everything else - not as fragile as we think they are. — Julie Powell

The dying process begins the minute we are born, but it accelerates during dinner parties. — Carol Grace

One client's wife managed to steam the labels off all of the several hundred bottles in her husband's prestigious wine collection, so the collection was worthless. The husband hosted 'What's that wine?' dinner parties. — Laura Wasser

It's certainly true that I was brought up in that British amateur tradition, the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan. — Damian Lewis