Quotes & Sayings About Meals Together

What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline.
Discipline is hard
harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We can't even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at. — Atul Gawande

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

We should all just face reality and stop taking our meals together. — Jonathan Tropper

It was cruel," said Dumbledore softly, "that you and Sirius had such a short time together. A brutal ending to what should have been a long and happy relationship."
Harry nodded, his eyes fixed resolutely on the spider now climbing Dumbledore's hat. He could tell that Dumbledore understood, that he might even suspect that until his letter arrived Harry had spent nearly all his time at the Dursleys' lying on his bed, refusing meals and staring at the misted window, full of the chill emptiness that he had come to associate with the Dementors.
"It's just hard," Harry said finally, in a low voice, "to realise he won't write to me again. — J.K. Rowling

Cooking gave us not just the meal but also the occasion: the practice of eating together at an appointed time and place. This was something new under the sun, for the forager of raw food would have likely fed himself on the go and alone, like all the other animals. (Or, come to think of it, like the industrial eaters we've more recently become, grazing at gas stations and eating by ourselves whenever and wherever.) But sitting down to common meals, making eye contact, sharing food, and exercising self-restraint all served to civilize us. — Michael Pollan

Patience never wants Wonder to enter the house: because Wonder is a wretched guest. It uses all of you but is not careful with what is most fragile or irreplaceable. If it breaks you, it shrugs and moves on. Without asking, Wonder often brings along dubious friends: doubt, jealousy, greed. Together they take over; rearrange the furniture in every one of your rooms for their own comfort. They speak odd languages but make no attempt to translate for you. They cook strange meals in your heart that leave odd tastes and smells. When they finally go are you happy or miserable? Patience is always left holding the broom. — Jonathan Carroll

The life of a family is filled with beautiful moments: rest, meals together, walks in the park or the countryside, visits to grandparents or to a sick person ... But if love is missing, joy is missing, nothing is fun. Jesus gives always gives us that love: he is its endless source. In the sacrament he gives us his word and he gives us the bread of life, so that our joy may be complete. — Pope Francis

In this family, we always celebrate each other's birthdays. I don't care if you're four or fourteen or forty and scattered around the world. We gotta stick by each other, okay? And meals- as long as you live under the same roof, you have at least one meal a day together. I don't care if it's a dreaded hot dog in front of the dastardly TV as long as you're all there. -Maeve Bennett — James Patterson

Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself. — Anthony Bourdain

In fact, people who posses not magic at all can instill their home-cooked meals with love and security and health, transforming ingredients and bringing disparate people together as family and friends. There's a reason that when opening one's home to guests, the first thing you do is offer food and drink. Cooking is a kind of everyday magic. — Juliet Blackwell

My family grew up relying on public assistance to help provide meals for our family. Child hunger in America is a real and often overlooked problem, but one that together, we can fix. — Scarlett Johansson

There is something profoundly satisfying about sharing a meal. Eating together, breaking bread together, is one of the oldest and most fundamentally unifying of human experiences. — Barbara Coloroso

Your gut includes the stomach, small intestine, large intestine (which includes the colon), liver, and gallbladder. The gut is responsible for ensuring that you absorb the nutrients of the food you eat, properly expel waste and toxins, and maintain a strong immune system. Yet not only is it critical for these everyday functions, your gut also holds a life force of its own. Food does not digest just from the physical process of food breakdown (a process scientific study hasn't fully pieced together); there are also critical spiritual and metaphysical factors involved in digestion. That's why enlightened beings on the planet employ eating techniques such as slow and thorough chewing; mindful, present eating; prayer before, during, or after meals; and becoming one with your food. — Anthony William

Your Highness, give me some credit. We have dined together for weeks now. There is no one to talk to during our meals except for an overweight dog. I will have noticed some things about you." Severin — K.M. Shea

Foord had insisted that their infrequent meals on the Bridge should be taken together, and defied any of the humans to object. Rather to his annoyance none of them had, although his liberal gesture did irritate Thahl and Smithson: they both found humans' eating conventions unsettling, though for different reasons, and would have preferred to eat alone. — John Love

We always ate with gusto...It would have offended the cook if we had nibbled or picked...Our mothers and zie [aunties] didn't inquire as to the states of our bellies; they just put the food on our plates.

'You only ask sick people if they're hungry,' my mother said. 'Everyone else must eat, eat!'

But when Italians say 'Mangia! Mangia!' they're not just talking about food. They're trying to get you to stay with them, to sit by them at the table for as long as possible. The meals that my family ate together- the many courses, the time in between at the table or on the mountain by the sea, the hours spent talking loudly and passionately and unyieldingly and laughing hysterically the way Neapolitans do- were designed to prolong our time together; the food was, of course, meant to nourish us, but it was also meant to satisfy, in some deeper way, our endless hunger for one another. — Sergio Esposito

To eat together is one of the greatest promoters of intimacy. It is the satisfaction in common of a material necessity of existence, and if you seek a loftier meaning in it, it is a communion ... — George Sand

Time is the most extraordinary gift for friendship. You'll get to eat your meals together and study together; in some cases you'll even sleep in the same room. You'll have time to waste on each other. You'll find out every single thing you have in common and still have time to catalogue all of your differences. Don't underestimate the vital necessity of friendship in your life because it is the thing that will sustain you later, when there will be considerably less time. — Ann Patchett

It was one of the best meals we ever ate.
Perhaps that is because it was the first conscious one, for me at least; but the fact that we remember it with such queer clarity must mean that it had other reasons for being important. I suppose that happens at least once to every human. I hope so.
Now the hills are cut through with superhighways, and I can't say whether we sat that night in Mint Canyon or Bouquet, and the three of us are in some ways even more than twenty-five years older than we were then. And still the warm round peach pie and the cool yellow cream we ate together that August night live in our hearts' palates, succulent, secret, delicious. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

Single people eat sadly
they cobble together things left from shopping trips based on dreams of all the meals they'd fix for themselves, all the ways they'd treat themselves to something grand; those dreams, for me, died by the next day and, despite my best hopes, I wanted only canned hash and apples. — Elizabeth McCracken

All the episodes from my stories and novels are not about food only, but about meals. You can eat food by yourself. A meal, according to my understanding anyhow, is a communal event, bringing together family members, neighbors, even strangers. At its most ordinary, it involves hospitality, giving, receiving, and gratitude. — Wendell Berry

Natalie was going to stay at home, cooking meals, baking pies, and making sure their life together was comfortable. When Zach came home from a hard day's work, she wanted to be there for him, not coping with her own stress and fatigue. She knew some women would object to her decision, but this was her life, and she was going to live it as she chose. — Pamela Clare

My keep-match meals: I'm good to go together with kale salad. Actually, Justin [Theroux] makes an ideal one with a poached egg and quinoa. It's actually scrumptious. — Jennifer Aniston

Any two meals at a boarding-house are together less than two square meals. — Stephen Leacock

As he drove away, I began to think that what kept us together was perhaps not even our romance with an imaginary France. That was just a veneer, an illusion. Rather, it was our desperate inability to lead ordinary lives with ordinary people anywhere
ordinary loves, ordinary homes, ordinary careers, watching ordinary television, eating ordinary meals, with ordinary friends
even ordinary friends we didn't have, or couldn't keep. — Andre Aciman

They took their meals together; and it was remarked on such occasions, when the friendship of animals is put to a hard test, that they never quarrelled or disputed the possession of a favourite fruit with each other. — Henry Walter Bates

We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts. — Anthony Bourdain

Standing over his bed, watching him sleep, Luce could see it. The way their love would have bloomed here.She could see Lucia coming in to bring Daniel his meals,him opening up to her slowly. The pair being inseparable by the time Daniel recovered. And it made her feel jealous and guilty and confused because she couldn't tell right now whether their love was a beautiful thing, or whether this was yet another instance of how very wrong it was.
If she was so young when they met, they must have had a long relationship in this life.She would have gotten to spend years with him before it happened. Before she died and was reincarnated into another life completely. She must have thought they'd spend forever together-and must not even have known how long forever meant.
But Daniel knew.He always knew. — Lauren Kate

With a shock, the trooper who had arrived to render aid to his fallen comrade recognized the one whose life was now bleeding out inside his armor. They had trained together. Shared meals, stories, experiences together. Now they were sharing death together. — Alan Dean Foster

You, I said, who are their legislator, having selected the men, will now select the women and give them to them; - they must be as far as possible of like natures with them; and they must live in common houses and meet at common meals. None of them will have anything specially his or her own; they will be together, and will be brought up together, and will associate at gymnastic exercises. And so they will be drawn by a necessity of their natures to have intercourse with each other - necessity is not too strong a word, I think? Yes, — Plato

'Cooking Lucky' is a show for guys - or girls - or really for anyone who is all thumbs in the kitchen and needs some help cooking meals that are so incredibly impressive they make it look like you've been slaving in the kitchen all day when in reality, they are so effortless to put together that even a moron can do it. — Eden Riegel

Marriage is a pretty amazing thing when you think about it. For two people to live together for so long under the same roof is a big accomplishment. Fifty-year anniversaries are becoming extinct, yet again proving that long marriages deserve awards and praise. Sometimes I see old people in restaurants sitting together eating their meals and I watch them. Sometimes it makes me sad. They don't even talk. Is it because they have nothing else to say, or can they simply read each other's mind by now? — Jenny McCarthy

Their unique essences mixed together, heavy and heady in the small room. Basil and cinnamon and allspice combined with those elements with no names. Somehow it all worked, all fit exactly right. And the result rivaled the most delicious meals, the most luxurious perfumes, the deep heady richness of the forest. It was perfect. — Kat Simons

Life is a collection of a million tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous pearls. Strung together, lined up through the days and the years, they make a life. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies. The Heisman Trophy winner knows this. He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy. It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed. It was the miles run on rainy days, the healthy meals when a burger sounded like heaven. That big moment represented and rested on a foundation of moments that had come before it. — Shauna Niequist

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