Quotes & Sayings About Dinner With Friends

Birthdays are just weird! I like to have something simple like a dinner with friends and family if possible. — Stephanie Sigman

The daily activity that contributes most to happiness is having dinner with friends. The daily activity that detracts most from happiness is commuting. Eat more. Commute less. — David Brooks

I really don't think in the past. I sit down with many friends at dinner, and they like to talk about the good old days. I'm respectful of the good old days, but I find myself spending very little time reminiscing. I'm really looking forward. — Donald Bren

The mountains are where I remember being with my friends. The timeline of any friendship is a series of scenes or memories, times where you were together over the course of the relationship. I've spent plenty of time with my friends drinking coffee and sharing dinner at restaurants; but those scenes always fade in to the background, overshadowed by adventures like this. — Brendan Leonard

You could be a rebel, a profound thinker, and a rock and roll maniac and still eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and drink a nice cup of tea with your friends. — Pamela Des Barres

Traveling as much as I do, I get lonely sometimes. I have friends now in cities all over the world, so I get to be social, but it's hard to have the deep meaningful relationships, especially an intimate one. With my guy friends, I can show up once a month and go to dinner with them and they're happy. — Blake Mycoskie

I think for Thanksgiving particularly I've always, one of the fun things for me about doing a big dinner is having friends and family so we've always done that, and even through our other holidays like having a mix of friends and family, and if you don't have your family nearby, or it's tough for you, find a friend and go and eat with them. — Kate Walsh

There's always a dinner to go to. There're always loads of people around. I was having fun working with my friends. For a while it all just kind of rolled together in a great way. — Kate Moss

Here, however, you made art because it was the only thing you've ever been good at, the only thing, really, you thought about between shorter bursts of thinking about the things everyone thought about: sex and food and sleep and friends and money and fame. But somewhere inside you, whether you were making out with someone in a bar or having dinner with your friends, was always your canvas, its shapes and possibilities floating embryonically behind your pupils. — Hanya Yanagihara

While at the University of Chicago a couple of friends and I went to dinner at some restaurant in China Town night. Oblivious to the fact that my idiocy can be heard outside of a five-foot radius, I started in with the "You been here four hour. You go now," routine. Ha ha, we all laugh because infantile racism is funny. A little while later I walked back to the bathroom, and as I went down the hall to the "Male Room," I passed this rickety open door. I peered in to see two little Chinese kids looking at me, holding their eyes wide open with their fingers (to give a Caucasian look), and saying: "Hot Dogs! Baseball! Hot Dogs! Baseball!" I laughed so hard, I almost didn't make it to the bathroom. You win this round, Chinese kids. — Tucker Max

My favorite thing in the world is to have just a big dinner with friends and just sit and talk about their life and their difficulties and all of that. — Lykke Li

I told him I'm not sleeping with him. I'm not that easy," she says. "Still, he invites me to Vegas and tells me he'll get me my own private suite, and that I could invite my girlfriends. So, I mean, my girlfriends and I obviously decide to go. When we get there, he lets us go shopping with his credit card. So we bought new clothes, facials, massages, purses, everything! Then we joined him and his friends for dinner ... Our dinner bill was, like - can you believe this? - $30,000! It was all the wine, appetizers, entrees, desserts, and champagne. The next week, I ignored his phone calls. I mean, I can't be bought. — Nick Miller

After Harding's death, the taciturn vice president, Calvin Coolidge, moved into the White House. In contrast to his predecessor's political cronyism and outgoing style, Coolidge personified austere rectitude. As vice president "Silent Cal" often sat through official functions without uttering a word. A dinner partner once challenged him by saying, "Mr. Coolidge, I've made a rather sizable bet with my friends that I can get you to speak three words this evening." Responded Coolidge icily, "You lose. — James A. Henretta

Even when I lived in Chicago and I didn't have any family there, I would just go like I would be a guest and have dinner with a bunch of friends and do potluck or something. So I think that's it, just finding people that you love that love you and hang out with them. — Kate Walsh

A suit is just a suit: a practical garment, not a ceremonial robe; it can be worn out to dinner with friends or for a visit to an art gallery. Its beauty and craftsmanship are utterly wasted if you think of it as something magical and symbolic. — Russell Smith

It is not strange that some of our revoltes preach trial marriage: for the only safe way to marry them at all would be on trial. Until you had definitely experienced all the human situations with them, you would have no means of knowing how, in any given situation, they would behave. They might conform about evening-dress, and throw plates between courses; they might be charming to your friends, and ask the waiter to sit down and finish dinner with you. Or they might in all things, little and big, be irreproachable. The point is that you would never know. — Katharine Fullerton Gerould

Religion is like going out to dinner with friends. Everyone may order something different, but everyone can still sit at the same table. — Dalai Lama

Your life is a trajectory. Every choice you make alters that trajectory, in a positive or negative way. Will you categorize that dinner with friends as a business expense? Will you be honest with your daughter? Will you take more credit than you're due? These are just the small questions that we face every day, and little by little, the answers influence the trajectory of our lives and beings. — Donald Van De Mark

My guest to dinner was my best friend, Jocelyn, who had taken the train down from New York. We forewent seeing any DC museums or national monuments to order cheeseburgers and watch Will & Grace in bed at our hotel, because we are real best friends, not lame fake friends trying to impress each other with how fascinated we are with culture and learning. — Mindy Kaling

On a Friday night in 1983, I was in a taxi in New York riding home from dinner with friends. A drunk driver ran a red light and hit the cab, and I was thrown toward the glass partition. I tried to duck, but my face hit the glass, and the impact fractured my cheekbone, my eye socket, my collarbone and several ribs. — Iman

Jean Jacques Rousseauis nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey ... For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends. — Stendhal

After dinner or lunch or whatever it was
with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what
I said, Look, baby, I'm sorry, but don't you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let's give it up. Let's just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let's go to the zoo. Let's look at animals. Let's drive down and look at the ocean. It's only 45 minutes. Let's play games in the arcades. Let's go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let's have friends. Let's laugh. This kind of life like everybody else's kind of life: it's killing us. — Charles Bukowski

But after all
I say this as a kind of afterthought in conclusion
why bother with success at all? I have observed that the successful people get very little real enjoyment out of life. In fact the contrary is true. If I had to choose
with an eye to having a really pleasant life
between success and ruin, I should prefer ruin every time. I have several friends who are completely ruined
some two or three times
in a large way of course; and I find that if I want to get a really good dinner, where the champagne is just as it ought to be, and where hospitality is unhindered by mean thoughts of expense, I can get it best at the house of a ruined man. — Stephen Leacock

You'll excuse me, Mrs. Graye,' she said, 'but 'tis the old gentleman's birthday, and they always have a lot of people to dinner on that day, though he's getting up in years now. However, none of them are sleepers - she generally keeps the house pretty clear of lodgers (being a lady with no intimate friends, though many acquaintances), which, though it gives us less to do, makes it all the duller for the younger maids in the house.' Mrs. Morris then proceeded to give in fragmentary speeches an outline of the constitution and government of the estate. — Thomas Hardy

The perfect party for me is having six to 12 people for dinner Friday or Saturday - good, fun friends, a lot of artists. I have a beautiful deck that looks over the canyon and Los Angeles on one side, so it's very pretty at night. It's a great opportunity to catch up with friends. — Sofia Milos

I wish I could have known Barbara Bodichon
and her whole vibrant circle of smart, fearless women friends. I'd like to gather them all around the dinner table, along with a few smart, fearless friends of my own. We'd open a bottle of wine and sit back to to hear their stories
marveling at all the things that have changed, and commiserating about all the things that haven't. And then we'd tell them thank you. We'd tell them that we never take for granted the rights they fought so hard for. And that we hope we, too, can make the world just a little better for the ones who follow after. — Terri Windling

People come to my places to eat dinner with their friends, not with me. — Peter Morton

When I was 4 my mother got divorced and we were very close to each other. I always wanted to be with her. She took me everywhere. When she went for dinner with friends or when they had meetings at the tennis club, I was always there. — Martina Hingis

If you're preparing a dinner for friends or a holiday dinner, make sure to only prepare recipes you are comfortable with and have cooked before. Cooking for others is not the time to try out a recipe for the first time. You end up spending all your time in the kitchen instead of enjoying your company. — Rachael Ray

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

Americans are curious about the texture of everyday life in the Middle East because they rarely get to see it. I wanted readers to feel like they were sitting around the dinner table with me and my friends, hearing what average people really say and really think, [where] the dinner table is the best place to find out. — Annia Ciezadlo

It's all right when you are calling on a girl or talking with friends after dinner to run a conversation like a Sunday-school excursion, with stops to pick flowers; but in the office your sentences should be the shortest distance possible between periods. — George Horace Lorimer

I had very few friends. We always ate dinner with our parents. We didn't want to go out. American adolescence was a lot wilder than I would have felt comfortable with. — Maya Lin

I try not to become friends with musicians, but life happens and dinner happens and going out happens - it becomes interwoven in L.A. — Ariel Rechtshaid

I'll see you there little Red.' Fane's voice faded out of her mind and she could feel his humor. Oh, wasn't he just too cute, picking up on her two best friends' idea of a sick joke - to turn her into the little girl who almost wound up as the wolf's dinner.
"My, what big eyes you have, wolf-man," Jacque said out loud, unable to stop her sarcasm from boiling up.
"The better to see you with love," Jen chimed in.
"What big ears you have!" Sally continued their comic relief.
"The better to hear you with my love," Jen followed.
"What big teeth you have!" Sally mocked, her hands on either side of her face.
"The better to eat you with my love," Jen cackled, but she wasn't finished. True to Jen form she added her own twisted sense of humour. "My, what a big-"
Sally slapped a hand over her mouth, quickly realising where Jen was going with that statement. — Quinn Loftis

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

But on a Sunday morning when I want to grab an omelet over girl talk, I'm at a loss. My Chicago friends are the let's-get-dinner-on-the-books-a-month-in-advance type. We email, trading dates until we find an open calendar slot amidst our tight schedules of workout classes, volunteer obligations (no false pretenses here, the volunteers are my friends, not me, sadly), work events, concert tickets and other dinners scheduled with other girls. I'm looking for someone to invite to watch The Biggest Loser with me at the last minute or to text "pedicure in half an hour?" on a Saturday morning. To me, that's what BFFs are. — Rachel Bertsche

it was a point of good manners not to sit with a clique of the same friends all the time, and it meant that conversation at dinner had to be open and general rather than close and gossipy — Philip Pullman

Getting up quite late in the morning, going and trying to clean my bikes - I have quite a few of them in Ranchi - spending some time with my family, my parents and friends. Going out for rides with my friends and having lunch or dinner at a roadside hotel - that's my favourite time-pass. These are the sort of things that really excite me. — Mahendra Singh Dhoni

If I didn't swim my best, I'd think about it at school, at dinner, with my friends. It would drive me crazy. — Michael Phelps

She's fourteen, which means that any kind of normal interaction with her is doomed to failure. We used to be pretty good friends, but fourteen-year-old girls are psychotic. Her main interests are yelling at Mom and not eating whatever is for dinner. — Jesse Andrews

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

One of the pleasures of staying with friends is that you get to browse their shelves. I always arrive with a book, but I almost never read it. It would be like sitting at their dinner table and opening a packet of sandwiches. — Simon Hoggart

They were the kind of couple you rolled your eyes at. The couple you wanted to punch square in their perfect noses, but secretly hoped would become your new best friends and invite you to a private dinner party where you'd eat something made with truffle oil and share a rueful laugh about the party scene in Ibiza. — Matt K. Turner

Spending more time with friends and family costs nothing. Nor does walking, cooking, meditating, making love, reading or eating dinner at the table instead of in front of the television. Simply resisting the urge to hurry is free. — Carl Honore

I am a stickler for good manners, and I believe that treating other people well is a lost art. In the workplace, at the dinner table, and walking down the street
we are confronted with choices on how to treat people nearly every waking moment. Over time these choices define who we are and whether we have a lot of friends and allies or none. — Tim Gunn

There is just no comparison between having a dinner date with a man and staying home playing canasta with the girls. — Marilyn Monroe

We walked to dinner, ate together, and talked nearly the whole time. I was amazed that I had as much in common with her as I did. I'd been raised mostly in a completely different country, yet we were so similar. — J.M. Richards

I watch, and the mothers watch. I do not know how to interact with the mothers. Am I them? They occasionally try to include me in a conversation, but it's clear they don't know what to make of me. I look over and smile when one of them makes a joke that is laughed at by all. They laugh, I chuckle - not too much, I don't want to seem overeager, but enough to say "I hear you. I laugh with you. I share in the moment." But when the chuckling is over I am still apart, something else, and no one is sure what I am. They don't want to invest their time in the brother sent to pick up Toph while his mother cooks dinner or is stuck at work or in traffic. To them I'm a temp. A cousin maybe. The young boyfriend of a divorcee? They don't care.
Fuck it. I don't want to be friends with these women, anyway. Why would I care? I am not them. They are the old model and we are the new. — Dave Eggers

I'm a pretty chill person. I'm kind of a homebody and I like to just hang out with friends and have dinner. I'm not, you know - I'm definitely not Neal Caffrey in the sense that I'm not, you know, drinking a $500 bottle of wine at a nightclub. I'm just - I'm pretty chill. — Matt Bomer

I'm not invited to the Vanity Fair dinner where they watch the Oscars - or even the Oscars themselves - so I sit at home and watch it with a bunch of close friends. — Brett Ratner

I don't really want to get married. I've got my career, my friends - my life is very, very full. It's nice to go out to dinner with a man and have fun, but I wouldn't rush into anything because I don't think it's right to bring another man into the house with my four children. — Jerry Hall

Are you a Genesis 1 Christian or a Genesis 3 Christian? Do you start your story with shalom or with sin? Shalom is the Hebrew word for "peace." For rhythm. For everything lining up exactly how it was meant to line up. Shalom is happening in those moments when you are at the dinner table for hours with good friends, good food, and good wine. Shalom is when you hear or see something and can't quite explain it, but you know it's calling and stirring something deep inside of you. Shalom is a sunset, that sense of exhaustion yet satisfaction from a hard day's work, creating art that is bigger than itself. Shalom is enemies being reconciled by love. — Jefferson Bethke

But I had never seen her that way. I had never known her as Pauline, the name he parents had given her, or as Posey, the name her friends had given her; only as Mom, the name I had given her. I could only see her carrying dinner to the table with kitchen mitts, or carpooling us to the bowling alley. — Mitch Albom

Writers are cannibals. They really are. They are predators, and if you are friends with them, and if you say anything funny at dinner, or if anything good happens to you, you are in big trouble. — Nora Ephron

When we agree to meet with friends, have drinks, dinner, and watch a movie on a Friday evening, we incur coordination costs. All the emails, text messages, and phone calls that are required to arrange a social evening are the coordination costs. So — David J. Anderson

You must always assume that the relationship between writer and producer is that of adversaries - however you slice it. They may be your dearest friends, and they'll invite you to dinner, but when all the smoke clears and the ozone lifts, your enemy is the producer, that's the guy you're competing with, and you have to battle him, just as if you were an adversary. — Rod Serling

When I would see my friends with their kids, I was envious that you can use children to get out of just about anything. If you don't feel like going to a dinner party, you could say, 'My kid's sick. I can't make it.' Who's gonna argue with you? — Kevin Nealon

It was funny, what friendship meant in Rebecca's world. It mainly meant lunch, twice a year, and the occasional dinner party, except for Dorothea, who was an old school friend, a genuine friend. Rebecca had realized, ruefully, that she should have made more friends in school; they seemed to be the only ones women really talked to honestly because the shared history meant fewer lies were available to them. With the others shared meals had become a substitute for intimacy, but not the kind of substitute that allowed for dark nights of the soul, calls at 1:00 A.M., tears and drinking and despair in pajamas. — Anna Quindlen

On page 605, Blumenthal says that 'I made friends with Hitchens's friends the novelists Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie.' True in its way. I particularly remember the occasion when he called me up and invited me to dinner with Dick Morris, but only on condition that I brought Rushdie (who was staying in my house) along with me. No Rushdie: no invitation. So I never did get to meet Dick Morris. — Christopher Hitchens

I do not go out to dinner or to the movies with the neighbors, as I do with my friends. I don't make dates with them. I don't have to. — Cathleen Schine

Your breath comes short and quick, you are feverish with excitement; the dinner-bell may ring its clapper off, you pay no attention; friends may die, weddings transpire, houses burn down, they are nothing to you; you sweat and dig and delve with a frantic interest - and all at once you strike it! Up comes a spadeful of earth and quartz that is all lovely with soiled lumps and leaves and sprays of gold. Sometimes — Mark Twain

Ren grinned. "So ... you and lady tigers, eh? Is there something you want share, Kishan?"
Kishan shoved a forkful of dinner into his mouth and mumbled, "How about I share my fist with your face?"
"Wow. Sensitive, I'm sure your lady tiger friends were all very attractive. So am I an uncle? — Colleen Houck

Make sure your characters are worth spending ten hours with. That's how long it takes to read a book. Reading a book is like being trapped in a room for ten hours with those characters. Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you've created? Your characters can be loveable, or they can be evil, but they'd better be compelling. If not, your reader will be bored and leave. — Po Bronson

I try to greet my friends with a drink in my hand, a warm smile on my face, and great music in the background, because that's what gets a dinner party off to a fun start. — Ina Garten

My memories of Las Vegas were all with my father when I was, like, a teenager. He was best friends with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and we'd come up and see the shows and go backstage afterwards and have dinner together. It was one of my first educations about stars and how they really are back stage. — Michael Douglas

Money isn't always the best motivator. If you leave a $50 check after dinner with friends, you don't increase the probability of being invited back. — Yochai Benkler

That evening I sat across from Jeremy Bulloch and Jacob at the dinner table. I watched as Jeremy, who seemed to speak Jacob's silent language fluently, drummed his fingers up and down on the edge of the table, as if playing a piano. A delighted Jacob mimicked the actor's actions. My throat filled with tears. I met Ben's eyes across the table, where he sat straight with pride next to his son. He was enjoying the show just as much as I was. Jacob was in his element, interacting with an actor from his favorite movie. The other men at the table were part of the set: Mike, the owner of the comic book store, who had made the entire thing possible, and the Mandalorin Mercs, new friends of the little boy who had
become one of their own, a comrade in distress. — Mary Potter Kenyon

On a summer night it can be lovely to sit around outside with friends after dinner and, yes, read poetry to each other. Keats and Yeats will never let you down, but it's differently exciting to read the work of poets who are still walking around out there. — Michael Cunningham

Helena abruptly stopped, cursing herself for deciding to go on this stupid trip to the ruins. If only she'd stayed at the hotel with her friends, none of this would've happened. Now her life was basically over; she'd end up dinner or a prisoner of some deranged nudist vampire. — Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

I stopped trying to chase the perfect place to be, and realized the perfect place is with your loved ones and your closest friends, around the dinner table, over a good meal, talking about the past year and the year to come and things that you want to change in your life. You hear their stories and talk about things you'd like to see happen in the world. That's what we do. — Hilary Swank

Yochai Benkler likens cultural creation to blood drives: the quality of donations increases when organizers stop paying.12 "Remember, money isn't always the best motivator," Benkler said, reiterating the point during a TED Talk touching on similar themes. "If you leave a fifty dollar check after dinner with friends, you don't increase the probability of being invited back. And if dinner isn't entirely obvious, think of sex. — Anonymous

In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable qualities. She liked their elegance; their lightness, their lack of emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like obtuseness now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They were lords of the only world she cared for, and they were ready to admit her to their ranks and let her lord it with them. Already she felt within her a stealing allegiance to their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a disbelief in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for the people who were not able to live as they lived. — Edith Wharton

Shalom is the Hebrew word for "peace." For rhythm. For everything lining up exactly how it was meant to line up. Shalom is happening in those moments when you are at the dinner table for hours with good friends, good food, and good wine. Shalom is when you hear or see something and can't quite explain it, but you know it's calling and stirring something deep inside of you. Shalom is a sunset, that sense of exhaustion yet satisfaction from a hard day's work, creating art that is bigger than itself. Shalom is enemies being reconciled by love. Shalom is when you are dancing to the rhythm of God's voice. — Jefferson Bethke

If you're having dinner with friends and they're always on the phone or always texting, it's just impolite. Unless it's something important - like someone is in the hospital or something - don't do it. — Adriana Lima

I came from dinner, went downtown with my friends, the elevator was down, I ran down the hall toward my room at 10 at night, having had two glasses of wine. — Jill Clayburgh

I like my home to be somewhere where my friends can feel like they can put their feet up on the couch and for it to feel like really easy living. I really love to have my friends over, cook dinner for them, catch up, and spend quality time with quality people in my life. — Stacy Keibler

I go to dinner with my friends, and we're like, 'Let's put our phones on airplane mode so we can really enjoy each other's company.' — Ansel Elgort

I'm kind of a dork. I don't have much game. I'm not particularly comfortable in bars or clubs. I much prefer being home playing Scrabble, having dinner with a couple friends, going to see a movie, or losing a whole weekend to Season 14 of Law and Order or The Simpsons. — Wentworth Miller

When you're friends with someone, you can't just go out to dinner and say 'O.K., now this is a date.' You've got to do something very different. — Dave Goldberg

But it was from him - with his cool, long sideburns and aviator sunglasses, 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. — Gabrielle Hamilton

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

We surf-fished in the breakers catching spottail bass and flounder for dinner. I discovered that summer that I loved to cook and feed my friends, and I enjoyed the sound of their praise as they purred with pleasure at the meals I fixed over glowing iron and fire. I had the run of my grandparents' garden and I would put ears of sweet corn in aluminum foil after washing them in seawater and slathering them with butter and salt and pepper. Beneath the stars we would eat the beefsteak tomatoes okra and the field peas flavored with salt pork and jalapeno peppers. I would walk through the disciplined rows that brimmed with purple eggplants and watermelons and cucumbers, gathering vegetables. My grandfather, Silas, told us that summer that low country earth was so fertile you could drop a dime into it and grow a money tree. — Pat Conroy

Warren and his boyfriend had put on a Thanksgiving dinner for their friends who didn't have families to go home to. Being gay meant they had a number of friends with no welcoming families. Mary — Patricia Briggs

A classic, navy blue blazer is my staple. It's a look that can take you from office meetings to dinner out with friends or family. — Tommy Hilfiger

We want Old Town Square to be a focal point for fun in Bandera, a place where locals can hold their special events and meetings, or just visit us for a relaxing dinner with friends on the patio. Likewise, tourists can use Old Town Square as a home base during their visit to Bandera. They can stay overnight and dine with us, but also explore all that Bandera has to offer. This was the place to come to. We want to make it that kind of place again. — Jerry Reed

If I'm out to dinner with a group of friends, and somebody offers to pay for the check, I immediately reach for my wallet. Inside is a note that says, "Say thanks!" — Mitch Hedberg

I was invited to a dinner party by an ex, and I was convinced that he wanted to rekindle our relationship. I prohibited my friends from coming with me because I didn't want to make it awkward for them when he professed his love to me. — Chrissie Fit

One year, I was a patron of a new opera. It was, to put it kindly, unpleasant to the ear. The friends I went with hated it. Keeping quiet about my contribution, I was outed when one of them, reading the program at the restaurant during dinner, saw my name. — Karen DeCrow

At a dinner party in north London, I listened to friends bragging about buying Porsches with their bonuses and sending out from their offices for pizzas and clean shirts because they were clinching a deal and could not leave their desks. I wanted to tell them of a place where every family had lost a son or a husband or had a leg blown off, almost every child seen someone die in a rocket attack and where a small boy had told me his dream was to have a brightly coloured ball. But, when I began to talk about Afghanistan, I watched eyes glaze and felt as if I was trying to have a conversation about a movie no one else had seen. — Christina Lamb

I hope you will like the little things I have sent you. You seem to be most interested in Railways just now, so I am sending you mostly things of that sort. I send as much love as ever, in fact more. We have both, the old Polar Bear and I, enjoyed having so many nice letters from you and your pets. If you think we have not read them you are wrong; but if you find that not many of the things you asked for have come, and not perhaps quite as many as sometimes, remember that this Christmas all over the world there are a terrible number of poor and starving people. I (and also my Green Brother) have had to do some collecting of food and clothes, and toys too, for the children whose fathers and mothers and friends cannot give them anything, sometimes not even dinner. I know yours won't forget you. So, my dears, I hope you will be happy this Christmas and not quarrel, and will have some good games with your Railway all together. Don't forget old Father Christmas, when you light your tree. — J.R.R. Tolkien

My own kids were with me in Berlin when Germany was reunited, and they were with me in Moscow when the Soviet Union collapsed. We talked about these things at the dinner table, at their schools, with their friends. — Serge Schmemann

I generally unwind by having dinner with close friends. — Nelson DeMille

He expected her to feel what she did not know how to feel. There were things that existed for him that she could not penetrate. With his close friends, she often felt vaguely lost. They were youngish and well-dressed and righteous, their sentences filled with "sort of," and "the ways in which"; they gathered at a bar every Thursday, and sometimes one of them had a dinner party, where Ifemelu mostly listened, saying little, looking at them in wonder: were they serious, these people who were so enraged about imported vegetables that ripened in trucks? They wanted to stop child labor in Africa. They would not buy clothes made by underpaid workers in Asia. They looked at the world with an impractical, luminous earnestness that moved her, but never convinced her. Surrounded by them, Blaine hummed with references unfamiliar to her, and he would seem far away, as though he belonged to them, and when he finally looked at her, his eyes warm and loving, she felt something like relief. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I have really fond memories of growing up in Chicago, and I always love going back. I still have a lot of really good friends from high school that I go to dinner with. It's kind of become a tradition when I go out there to do a show to give a few friends a call, tell some funny stories about high school and walk down memory lane. — Kaskade

I absolutely did consider Ben a friend, and still do. But beyond that I'm not particularly close - I'm close to my family, in general, and I have friends, and I'm close to them, but probably not in the traditional way that people assume friendships are like. I'm not a big hangout guy. When I say we're friends, we're friends, but it's not like we summer together, or we went out to dinner every week. I don't really do that with anybody. STEPHEN — Chris Smith

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

The time of minor poets is coming. Good-by Whitman, Dickinson, Frost. Welcome you whose fame will never reach beyond your closest family, and perhaps one or two good friends gathered after dinner over a jug of fierce red wine ... While the children are falling asleep and complaining about the noise you're making as you rummage through the closets for your old poems, afraid your wife might've thrown them out with last spring's cleaning.
It's snowing, says someone who has peeked into the dark night, and then he, too, turns toward you as you prepare yourself to read, in a manner somewhat theatrical and with a face turning red, the long rambling love poem whose final stanza (unknown to you) is hopelessly missing. — Charles Simic

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

Challenging is good, like good conversation, yes? Who wants to have dinner with the same old easy listening music sounding friends all the time? — Hilton Als