Julia Child Rules Quotes

“Old age. I don't know when it really starts, and I'm not interested in finding out. Julia pretty much ignored the whole thing, and that may be the only real lesson there is for the end of our days. Just pretend like it isn't happening, until you have no choice but to accept reality. If you're lucky, like Julia, you'll die peacefully in your sleep after having enjoyed a dinner of onion soup.”
― Karen Karbo, Julia Child Rules: Lessons On Savoring Life

“Years later, when Julia was famous she would often receive letters from people who asked not simply how they might learn to cook. They already knew the answer: The owned her cookbooks, but they were yearning to know how they might become passionate about it. She always answered the same thing: Go to France and eat.”
― Karen Karbo, Julia Child Rules: Lessons On Savoring Life

“Julia arrived at “just do it” as a personal credo long before Nike snapped it up. Nothing anyone thought about her could stop her. Imagine a life in which you’re never too anything for anything. Never too old to go back and get that degree. Never too uncoordinated to cut loose on the dance floor. Never too wrong-of-body to wear that swimsuit and throw yourself into the waves.”
― Karen Karbo, Julia Child Rules: Lessons on Savoring Life

“Persevering is not often simply a matter of working hard and refusing to quit; often, by trying again, failing again, and failing better, we inadvertently place ourselves in the way of luck.”
― Karen Karbo, Julia Child Rules: Lessons On Savoring Life

“...behind every Guide Michelin chef there was a woman, usually a four foot cataract-ridden old granny from whom he'd filched his best recipes.”
― Karen Karbo, Julia Child Rules: Lessons On Savoring Life

“Once in a great while, she was distressed by the way she looked. As she was rounding the bend to forty she would write to Avis DeVoto that whenever she read Vogue she "felt like a frump....but I suppose that is the purpose of all of it, to shame people out of their frumpery so they will go out and buy 48 pairs of red shoes, have a facial, pat themselves with deodorizers, buy a freezer, and put up the new crispy window curtains with a draped valence."
Julia was able to deconstruct the disingenuous motives that drive women's magazines with the ease she normally reserved for deboning a duck, seeing quite clearly that while ostensibly offering inspiration and useful advice, the stories and articles quietly pummel the reader's sense of self, the better to drive her into the arms of the advertisers.”
― Karen Karbo, Julia Child Rules: Lessons On Savoring Life

“Had she been a more instinctive, "natural" cook, she might have felt less compelled to parse each recipe, to tackle each one as though getting it right were a matter of life and death.”
― Karen Karbo, Julia Child Rules: Lessons On Savoring Life

“These days, we've gotten incredibly fussy. With our personal playlists, our complicated made-to-order half-caf, half-decaf lattes, our special mattresses that can adjust for each sleeper, our individually designed college curriculums, we've gotten out of the habit of making do with what's at hand. Part of living with abandon is giving oneself over to one's circumstances without any expectation that things are going to be to our liking anytime soon. We can hope that things will improve, but it shouldn't prevent us from doing what we've set out to do. Julia had an astonishing capacity to be content with what was in front of her, whether it be a cooking school run on spit and a string or a less than perfect hunk of meat. She made do and moved on and rarely regretted it.”
― Karen Karbo, Julia Child Rules: Lessons On Savoring Life