Dearie Quotes

“Julia dealt with rules the way she later dealt with vegetarians; she pretended they didn't exist.”
― Bob Spitz, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

“The cooking was invigorating, joyous. For Julia, the cooking fulfilled the promises that Le Cordon Bleu had made but never kept. Where Le Cordon Bleu always remained rooted in the dogma of French cuisine, Julia strove to infuse its rigors with new possibilities and pleasures. It must have felt liberating for her to deconstruct Carême and Escoffier, respecting the traditions and technique while correcting the oversight. “To her,” as a noted food writer indicated, “French culinary tradition was a frontier, not a religion.” If a legendary recipe could be improved upon, then let the gods beware.”
― Bob Spitz, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

“On the endive show, she offered a Yogi Berra-style malaprop: "Now don't wash endive-that is, unless it's dirty." And during an episode of forgetfulness: "I did not have my glasses on when I was thinking." Once, she sorted through a jungle of seaweed in search of a twenty-pound lobster lurking in its folds; another time, she lifted the veil over a platter hunting for the "big, bad artichoke" lying furtively underneath.”
― Bob Spitz, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

“It existed almost by oversight, “far removed from reality,” as one of the “Kandy Kids” wrote, “where everyone had an academic interest in the war but found life far too pleasant to do anything too drastic about it.”
― Bob Spitz, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

“for that pent‑up ambition.”
― Bob Spitz, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

“Julia was determined to stand at the center of her own world, to express herself without following timeworn rules. Being a housewife—that is, the ideal of a housewife—wasn’t in the cards. The bounds of domesticity couldn’t contain her. Through cooking Julia found real purpose in her life, and through that purpose a greater meaning.”
― Bob Spitz, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

“She sparked an interest and understanding of food that whet people’s appetites for a different kind of culinary experience. It takes a real nonconformist to start a revolution, and Julia Child started a corker, one that was to affect the nation’s behavior and change the way its people lived their daily lives.”
― Bob Spitz, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

“She not only brought fun headfirst into the modern American kitchen, a place that housewives equated with lifelong drudgery, but used it to launch public television into the spotlight,”
― Bob Spitz, Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child