Eating As A Family Quotes & Sayings

As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible. — Mario Batali

Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by our rulers. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily available and the latter is not. A poor family would undoubtedly rather have a decent apartment than a new TV, but since they are unlikely to get the apartment, what is to be gained by not getting the TV? — Ellen Willis

As he was shaking off, it came to Jake Chambers that the Pere would never do this again, or grin at him and point his finger; or cross himself before eating. They had killed him. Taken his life. Stopped his breath and pulse. Save for dreams, the Pere was now gone from the story. Jake began to cry. — Stephen King

After praying, and before eating anything, it is a good custom for everyone to feed one another a small portion of the food. This will help to cultivate mutual love and affection among the family members. — Mata Amritanandamayi

If you can eat with mates or friends or family, I mean, it's such a brilliant thing isn't it? If you feel really rubbish and you have a nice bit of food it makes you feel good, you know?
— Jamie Oliver

When faced with choosing between attributing their pain to "being crazy" and having had abusive parents, clients will choose "crazy" most of the time. Dora, a 38-year-old, was profoundly abused by multiple family perpetrators and has grappled with cutting and eating disordered behaviors for most of her life. She poignantly echoed this dilemma in her therapy:
I hate it when we talk about my family as "dysfunctional" or "abusive." Think about what you are asking me to accept - that my parents didn't love me, care about me, or protect me. If I have to choose between "being abused" or "being sick and crazy," it's less painful to see myself as nuts than to imagine my parents as evil. — Lisa Ferentz

Take, for instance, studies from the past decade examining the impacts of exercise on daily routines.4.10 When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It's not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. "Exercise spills over," said James Prochaska, a University of Rhode Island researcher. "There's something about it that makes other good habits easier. — Charles Duhigg

Thank God for Carrie Wiatt (creator of Diet Designs)! She has raised my consciousness of healthy eating so much that it will be practiced by me and my family for the rest of our lives. I never dreamed low-fat food could taste so good! — Sela Ward

According to the American Psychological Association, the most effective stress-relief strategies are exercising or playing sports, praying or attending a religious service, reading, listening to music, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, going outside of ra walk, meditating or doing yoga, and spending time with a creative hobby. (The least effective strategies are gambling, shopping, smoking, drinking, eating, playing video games, surfing the Internet, and watching TV or movies for more than two hours. — Kelly McGonigal

Babcock knew no Southerners personally but he had seen them in court often enough ... and Ed's manner and appearance said Dixie to him. He imagined Ed at home with his family, a big one, from old geezers to toddlers. He saw them eating their yams and pralines and playing their fiddles and dancing their jigs and guffawing over coarse jokes and beating one another to death with agricultural implements. — Charles Portis

5. Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films, and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Eating disorders are like a gun that's formed by genetics, loaded by a culture and family ideals, and triggered by unbearable distress. — Aimee Liu

We forget that, historically, people have eaten for a great many reasons other than biological necessity. Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, and about expressing our identity. As long as humans have been taking meals together, eating has been as much about culture as it has been about biology. — Michael Pollan

You hurt her by starving yourself, you hurt her with your lies, and by fighting everybody who tries to help you. Emma can only sleep a couple of hours a night now. She's haunted by nightmares of monsters that eat our whole family. They eat us slowly, she says, so we can feel their sharp teeth. — Laurie Halse Anderson

I deserve this shrimp. Born to people who clearly shouldn't have reproduced, I date my best friend and turn him gay, date another man who doesn't know he's gay, almost have dinner with a third man who's more interested in his reflection than me, and land on a yeti who turns out to be a millionaire playboy.

"I lost the man I thought of as a father, had my thirtieth birthday party minus any family, and now I'm being dissed in the gossip rags. I am only human and I can take no more, so, yes, I have consumed my body weight in wine and I plan on eating this whole goddamn plate of shrimp. — L.A. Fiore

At a family occasion in the 1990s, I met a relative by marriage who had spent time in Auschwitz. Within seconds of meeting me he clenched my wrist and recounted this story. A group of men had been eating in silence when one of them slumped over dead. The others fell on his body, still covered in diarrhea, and pried a piece of bread from his fingers. As they divided it, a fierce argument broke out when some of the men felt their share was an imperceptible crumb smaller than the others'. To tell a story of such degradation requires extraordinary courage, backed by a confidence that the hearer will understand it as an accounting of the circumstances and not of the men's characters. — Steven Pinker

Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable - the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction. — Jonathan Safran Foer

When our boulevards are lined with an infinity of bad eating houses filled with dead-faced people placed like mute beasts in their stalls; today, when one out of every three marriages ends in divorce ... It seems incredible that normal human beings not only tolerate the average American restaurant food, but actually prefer it to eating at home. The only possible explanation for such deliberate mass-poisoning, a kind of suicide of the spirit as well as the body, is that meals in the intimacy of a family dining-room or kitchen are unbearable. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

When the topic of food comes up in conversation with family, friends or casual acquaintances, it's fascinating to hear the litany of rationalizations, knee-jerk defense mechanisms, self-limiting belief statements and general confusion or ignorance from otherwise intelligent folks when it comes to eating healthfully. But then again, Conventional Wisdom has often led even the best and brightest minds in nutritional science astray. — Mark Sisson

Beyond a certain point, gathering further evidence of the hurtfulness and shortcomings of one's family, employer, et cetera is like eating the same poisonous mushroom over and over and expecting that sooner or later it will be nutritious. — Mark Vonnegut

The thing I love about television is that people watch you in their pajamas, and when they're eating dinner. You're part of the family. — Barbara Feldon

It is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an 'environmental crisis' because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, god-given world. — Wendell Berry

The table is the number one place we pass on family stories and it's the knowledge of where your family came from that helps build self-esteem and resiliency in kids. When we stop having dinners, we stop passing on those stories. And, of course, when you make food at home you actually know what's in the food you are eating. It is the healthiest, greenest thing you can do! — Laurie David

We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn't ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts. — Jonathan Safran Foer

My name used to be in the papers daily
As having dined somewhere,
Or traveled somewhere,
Or rented a house in Paris,
Where I entertained the nobility.
I was forever eating or traveling,
Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.
Now I am here to do honor
To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang.
No one cares now where I dined,
Or lived, or whom I entertained,
Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden! — Edgar Lee Masters

You go to a restaurant in the States and kids have these game boards at the table. You don't see that in Italy or Spain. It's not because they can't afford to buy them, it's because that's not what eating together as a family is about. — Emeril Lagasse

Given that eating animals is in absolutely no way necessary for my family - unlike some in the world, we have easy access to a wide variety of other foods - should we ear animals? — Jonathan Safran Foer

Obviously, your family life is the priority, but there's still other stuff you have to get done in a day. I think the way I make it work is by taking care of myself, and that includes fitness and eating right and all those things, but also by being very organized and punctual. — Cindy Crawford

Oil and Water, Daddy calls us. At four years younger than me, Katie is only fourteen and she already has half the boys in town eating from her pretty little hand. She tells me I am too tall and too wicked looking to capture the heart of any sensible young man. — Gwenn Wright

We had no compunction toward our enemies [the ants] and took to increasingly desperate and violent means of dealing with them. If we noticed they'd laid siege to a snack, we might trap them in a circle drawn with water and take away whatever they were eating, then watch them scurry about in confusion before wiping them off the floor with a wet cloth. I took pleasure in seeing them shrivel into black points when burning coals were rolled over them. When they attacked an unwashed pan or cup they'd soon be mercilessly drowned. I suppose initially each of us did these things only when we were alone, but in time, we began to be openly cruel. We came around to Amma's view of them as demons come to swallow our home and became a family that took pleasure in their destruction. We might have changed houses since, but habits are harder to change. — Vivek Shanbhag

Typically, people who exercise, start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change. — Charles Duhigg

Europe has another meaning for me. Every time I mention that word, I see the Bosnian family in front of me, living far away from whatever they call home and eating their own wonderful food because that's all that is left for them. The fact remains that after fifty years, it was possible to have another war in Europe; that it was possible to change borders; that genocide is still possible even today. — Slavenka Drakulic

The most important form of selfishness involves spending time on your fitness, eating right, pursuing your career, and still spending quality time with your family and friends. — Scott Adams

Being Latina, I'm super close with my family. I love them, and I love spending time with them. I love being at my grandma's house and eating her food. — Emeraude Toubia

Creating a meal for my friends and family, sitting together, eating, laughing and talking - that is when I am so happy. Oh my God, if you could see how much food I make - I am the original Jewish mother. — Gwyneth Paltrow

My father sits at the head of a table before the carcass of an enormous American turkey. What he is ashamed of is the one act of decency I have yet encountered in all the tales of our family's past. A young boy with a dead father and a dead friend bends down before a country dog and feeds it his butter sandwich. And I know that sandwich. Because he has made it for me. Two slices of that dark, unbleached Russian bread, the kind that tastes of badly managed soil and a peasant's indifference to death. On top of it, the creamiest, deadliest of American butter, slathered in thick feta-like hunks. And on top of that cloves of garlic, the garlic that is to give me strength, that is to clear my lungs of asthmatic gunk, and make of me a real garlic-eating strong man. At a table in Leningrad, and a table in deepest Queens, New York, the ridiculous garlic crunches beneath our teeth as we sit across from each other, the garlic obliterating whatever else we have eaten, and making us one. — Gary Shteyngart

You make the plans - otherwise you will die thinking it is not possible to plan to have time for work, for exercise, for sleep, for relaxation, for recreation, for eating, for entertainment, for love, for family, for spirituality, for friends, for personal reflection, for personal development, for business, for charity all in one life! — Archibald Marwizi

Cat Stevens is also the only other member of the family who enjoys eating the meats that Dad brings home from the Strip, although sometimes he expresses his enjoyment by barfing. — Jesse Andrews

I enjoyed coming home to Crown Heights. There was a certain order to life there. You know, Shabbos, spending time with your family, eating and being in 'shul.' Prayers at nighttime, prayers in the morning. Everyone knows everybody; you walk your kids everywhere. — Matisyahu

I think I've lost my appetite," she said. "Nah," he laughed. "I didn't do anything scary. I didn't threaten or beg. I offered help. We've had a few rough spots, but we have good rapport. Abby, I really want to be part of this. You're awful special to me. Keep eating and tell me about those fireflies you caught as a kid. Tell me about going to the lake with your family." She — Robyn Carr

There are big parts of my life that I don't share. I don't share myself eating dinner with my family. I don't talk about who I'm dating. That's private; that's me. — Ansel Elgort

The Protein Myth is so ingrained in us that the first thing family and friends will ask a newly declared vegetarian is how they will get their protein. The fact is, protein is easy to find. A head of Romaine lettuce has 106 calories and 8 grams of protein. Eat six of them and you get 636 calories and 48 grams of protein, all the protein a 132-pound person needs in a day. Nobody is recommending that as a diet, but it illustrates that as long as you are eating adequate calories of natural, healthful foods, the fabled protein problem almost takes care of itself. — Robin Asbell

Mohandas's marriage, which was arranged when he was thirteen, lasted for the next sixty-two years. Despite his enduring reputation for living a life of simplicity and self-denial, he did not come to this easily and struggled in his youth with uncontrolled appetites, both sexual and gastronomic. In violation of his family's religious code, he experimented with meat eating, hoping it would make him large and strong like the carnivorous English. — Mark Kurlansky

I just want a life of happiness, laughter and possibility,
I want a passion that I call my job, to pay my bills.
I want to spend my time, eating good food & making unremarkable memories with the family I have left.
I want friends that can be honest enough to tell me, if I fuck up, so I can fix it & also beautiful enough to know when I'm lieing in my smile.
I want a lover who isn't afraid to love me with every inch of his heart but also fearless in keeping his individual voice as we grow together.
And I will have all of it, because I believe I am worthy of it. — Nikki Rowe

Evening attend two "fandangos." Girls not very pretty but exceedingly graceful. [You] pay a dime for a figure and refreshments foryour doxy, who instead of eating prudently stores her cakes, etc., in a basket to be taken home for the family. — Rutherford B. Hayes

I used to think that kid might become a preacher. Now I don't see how he's going to stay out of prison. Nobody in this family ever went to prison for sex crimes. He'd be the first."
Yes," says Jesus, "you never know about these things."
He and Grandpa are drinking cups of coffee and eating ginger snaps. Grandpa says, "When are you planning to return to earth?"
Soon as I finish this coffee," say Jesus. "Pretty good, isn't it. — Garrison Keillor

We need to give children ways to help themselves feel good," she tells me. "Parents can start with simple messages throughout the morning that children can repeat - messages such as: It's so easy to get dressed. I love getting dressed. Breakfast is always a fun time. We're all so glad to see each other. We love eating breakfast together. Breakfast makes my body feel good. "Parents can even go around the table and have each family member share one thing they love about themselves. Or they can put affirmations in a bowl and choose one for the whole family to focus on during the day. This can become a morning ritual for couples, families, roommates, and so on. Each person can even decide on one experience they'd like to have that day and create an affirmation for — Louise L. Hay

All of it pointed to a force stronger than the anxious formulas of religion: a radically inclusive love that accompanied people in the most ordinary of actions - eating, drinking, walking - and stayed with them, through fear, even past death. That love meant giving yourself away, embracing outsiders as family, emptying yourself to feed and live for others. The stories illuminated the holiness located in mortal human bodies, and the promise that people could see God by cherishing all those different bodies the way God did. They spoke of a communion so much vaster than any church could contain: one I had sensed all my life could be expressed in the sharing of food, particularly with strangers. — Sara Miles

The "environmental crisis," in fact, can be
solved only if people, individually and in their communities, recover responsibility for their thoughtlessly given proxies. If people begin the effort to take back into their own power a significant portion of their economic responsibility, then their inevitable first discovery is that the "environmental crisis" is no such thing; it is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an "environmental crisis" because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, the god-given world. — Wendell Berry

There, at the top of the table, alone amongst all these women, stooped over his ample plateful, with his napkin tied around his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, drips of gravy drbibbling gravy from him lips. His eyes were bloodshot and he had a little pigtail tied up with a black ribbon. This was the Marquis' father-in-law ... he had led a ... Read more tumultuous life of debauchery and duelling, of wagers made and women abducted, had squandered his fortune and terrified his whole family ... Emma's eyes kept coming back to this old man with the sagging lips, as though to something wonderfully majestic. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of a queen! — Gustave Flaubert

I have mostly been terrified of listening to scary stories around a campfire. We camp a lot as a family, and at night my dad would try and tell us scary stories. This made eating s'mores difficult. The story would start with something like ... 'and the old man who lived in these woods ... ' I would then run back into the camper terrified. — Willow Shields

Be patient and gentle with yourself as you continue to learn new ways of eating and living. There is no need for hard-and-fast rules or white-knuckle determination. Keep leaning forward into the positive changes you are making, and then apply that same gentleness to your family and community. There is no need to promote your ideals, but rather attract interest by being informed and interesting, healthy and robust-looking, and most of all, kind. After all, if we want to create change in the world, we have to embody the quality and character we'd like to see more of! — Kathy Freston

Danger comes in many forms, I suppose. For some people, it might be jumping off a bridge or climbing impossible moutains. For others, it could be a tawdry love affair or telling off a mean-looking bus driver because he doesn't like to stop for noisy teenagers. It could be cheating at cards or eating a peanut even though you're allergic. For me, danger might be getting out from the protective cloak of my family and venturing into the world more of my own, even though I don't know what- or who- awaits me. — David Levithan

Everyone is always leaving each other, chasing down the next seeming opportunity - home or body. Where does it stop? Does it ever? I want to believe it all leads to something grander than the imagination, grander than the end-stop of the Pacific. Or is that it: You get to the place where you land; you are tired now; you settle. You settle. You build a home and raise a family. There are years of eating and arguing, working and waking. There are years of dying. No one knows what the last image will be. — Bich Minh Nguyen

As our lives speed up more and more, so do our children's. We forget and thus they forget that there is nothing more important than the present moment. We forget and thus they forget to relax, to find spiritual solitude, to let go of the past, to quiet ambition, to fully enjoy the eating of a strawberry, the scent of a rose, the touch of a hand on a cheek ... — Michael Gurian

Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they're eating sandwiches. — Jim Carrey

When you have a Jewish mother who has a very strong Jewish family, it's very ethnic in its practices. Eating brisket, the food and the family and the interconnectedness for better or worse. — Goldie Hawn

Now, now," my father said. "Let's just get the bags."
This was typical. My father, the lone male in our estrogen-heavy household, had always dealt with any kind of emotional situation or conflict by doing something concrete and specific. Discussion of cramps and heavy flow at the breakfast table? He was up and out the door to change oil on one of our cars. Coming home in tears for reasons you just didn't want to discuss? He'd go make you a grilled cheese, which he'd probably end up eating. Family crisis brewing in a public place? Bags. Get the bags. — Sarah Dessen

I've been vegetarian for so long now that I don't remember anything different, so it's easy for me to put meals together and make sure my family is eating healthy, too. — Christina Applegate

I would think that counted as offering resistance," Will said. "Eating one's son-in-law, that is. Though I suppose everyone has their family altercations. — Cassandra Clare

I'm eating breakfast with half the royal family, Golden Guard, and a Western noble, at the siege of Soricium," Vhalla wheezed. "And it feels perfectly normal. — Elise Kova

Eating at home is fine, as I can easily work around the foods that don't agree with me and still eat heartily with the rest of my family. I don't force them to follow my diet. — Andrea McLean

Eating in Italy is essentially a family art, practiced for and by the family. The finest accomplishments of the home cook are not reserved like the good silver and china for special occasions or for impressing guests, but are offered daily for the pleasure and happiness of the family group. — Marcella Hazan

You don't ask people about the immigration policies of the U.K. or their country's agricultural policy. Instead, you talk to them about the meal they're eating or their family, and from that you get the sense of another human being, someone we can all relate to. — Michael Palin

I've spent a lot of Thanksgivings on the road with my band, so anytime that I can spend Thanksgiving with my family in a traditional aspect, eating sweet potatoes and cranberries and stuffing and all the trappings of Thanksgiving and then get on a treadmill the next day extra long, I'm happy. — Richie Sambora

Cowgirl Interlude (Bonanza Jellybean)
She is lying on the family sofa in flannel pajamas. There is Kansas City mud on the tips and heels of her boots, boots that have yet to savor real manure. Fourteen, she knows she ought to remove her boots, yet she refuses. A Maverick rerun is on TV; she is eating beef jerky, occasionally slurping. On her upper stomach, where her pajama top has ridden up, is a small deep scar. She tells everyone, including her school nurse, that it was made by a silver bullet.
Whatever the origin of the extra hole in her belly, there are unmistakable signs of gunfire int he woodwork by the closet door. It was there that she once shot up one half of an old pair of sneakers. "Self-defense," she pleaded, when her parents complained. "It was a [sic] out-law tennis shoe.
Billy the Ked. — Tom Robbins

I try to live my life like my father lives his. He always takes care of everyone else first. He won't even start eating until he's sure everyone else in the family has started eating. Another thing: My dad never judges me by whether I win or lose. — Ben Roethlisberger

A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven ... Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She'd read that one and thought, Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what made the children think they could just walk around eating people's houses in any case? And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beans have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold? Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism? And some girl who can't tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family. — Terry Pratchett

My family get so mad at me when they come over. All I'll have in is milk and eggs. I mainly keep film in my fridge - it's better for it; it stops it from going old. I'm bad at eating healthy; I usually just run across the street and get cheeseburgers. — Gia Coppola

I love eating at Sonic with my family in Oklahoma. And no, I'm not kidding. — Kristin Chenoweth

You're shopping, you're cooking, you're getting together with family, you're eating food that's bad for you, you're eating more food that's bad for you, and of course you're eating food that's bad for you. Holidays are also an opportunity for — Jim Gaffigan

I'm tired of eating your family's lousy, tasteless recipes," Dad said.
"Tasteless recipes? My grandmother's rolling in her grave!"
"It's from indigestion. — Neal Shusterman

But when she saw her eating with her hands, incapable of giving an answer that was not a miracle of simple-mindedness, the only thing that she lamented was the fact that the idiots in the family lived so long. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Once the pasta is sauced, serve it promptly, inviting your guests and family to put off talking and start eating. — Marcella Hazan

I've never had anorexia, but I know it well. I see it on the street, in the gaunt and sunken face, the boney chest, the spindly arms of an emaciated woman. I've come to recognize the flat look of despair, the hopelessness that follows, inevitably, from years of starvation. I think: That could have been [me]. It wasn't. It's not. — Harriet Brown

Growing up, dinner was when we would sit down, the whole family, and we would talk about our days and just create memories with one another. Now some of my favorite memories are eating and making food with my son. — Tia Mowry

She was coming over to my place and instead of us hanging with my knucklehead boys - me smoking, her bored out of her skull - we were seeing movies. Driving out to different places to eat. Even caught a play at the Crossroads and I took her picture with some bigwig black playwrights, pictures where she's smiling so much you'd think her wide-ass mouth was going to unhinge. We were a couple again. Visiting each other's family on the weekends. Eating breakfast at diners hours before anybody else was up, rummaging through the New Brunswick library together, the one Carnegie built with his guilt money. A nice rhythm we had going. — Junot Diaz

We love to be with our family and friends and I can tell you that lots of eating will be involved. — Julia Barr

People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two loves, but this, too, was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel
before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him; it was as if he had always been. Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slightly noticeable buckteeth. He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away. — Zadie Smith

My family was so poor we were close to eating the holes inside of doughnuts. — Malcolm X

I have the best memories as a kid eating ice cream. It was a family tradition that I had with my father. It was nice. — Michael Strahan

Suppose you had said to my hypothetical family of 1800, eating their gristly stew in front of a log fire, that in two centuries their descendants would need to fetch no logs or water, and carry out no sewage, because water, gas, and a magic form of invisible power called electricity would come into their home through pipes and wires. They would jump at the chance to have such a home, but they would warily ask ho they could possibly afford it. Suppose that you then told them that to earn such a home, they need only ensure that father and mother both have to go to work for eight hours in an office, travelling roughly forty minutes each way in a horseless carriage, and that the children need not work at all, but should go to school to be sure of getting such jobs when they start to work at twenty. They would be more than dumbfounded; they would be delirious with excitement. — Matt Ridley