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aae5499
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But the not-very-highbrow truth of the matter was that the reading was how I got my ya-yas out. For the sake of my bookish reputation I upgraded to Tolstoy and Steinbeck before I understood them, but my dark secret was that really, I preferred the junk. The Dragonriders of Pern, Flowers in the Attic, The Clan of the Cave Bear. This stuff was like my stash of Playboys under the mattress.
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reading
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Julie Powell |
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14174ad
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The nice thing about having a friend who is crazier than you are is that she bolsters your belief in your own sanity.
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Julie Powell |
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5b6140b
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Like the muscles knew from the beginning that it would end with this, this inevitable falling apart... It's sad, but a relief as well to know that two things so closely bound together can separate with so little violence, leaving smooth surfaces instead of bloody shreds.
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marriage
love
divorce
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Julie Powell |
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b864adc
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If there's a sexier sound on this planet than the person you're in love with cooing over the crepes you made for him, I don't know what it is.
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funny
spouses
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Julie Powell |
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116ae22
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Doors are going to open-doors you can't even imagine exist.
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Julie Powell |
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452d877
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I love my husband like a pig loves shit.
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Julie Powell |
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8a758f9
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Julia taught me what it takes to find your way in the world. It's not what I thought it was. I thought it wa all about-I don't know, confidence or will or luck. Those are all some good things to have, no question. But there's something else, somethng that these things grow out of. It's joy.
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Julie Powell |
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a1920e7
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Nowadays anyone with a crap laptop and an Internet connection can sound their barbaric yawp, whatever it may be.
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Julie Powell |
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fbb085b
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I felt like a Jane Austen heroine all of a sudden, confusedly looking on at all the people she loves, their myriad unpredictable couplings and uncouplings. There would be no marriages at the end of this Austen novel, though, no happy endings, no endings at all. Just jokes and friendships and romances and delicious declarations of independence.
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Julie Powell |
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afb60a2
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But hard bitten cynicism leaves one feeling peevish, and too much of it can do lasting damage to your heart.
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Julie Powell |
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8d40a7c
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Two years ago, I was a twenty-nine year old secretary. Now I am a thirty-one year old writer. I get paid very well to sit around in my pajamas and type on my ridiculously fancy iMac, unless I'd rather take a nap. Feel free to hate me -- I certainly would.
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Julie Powell |
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ca3d1e0
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There are times with your friends when you just have to put their whole mess out of your mind for a while.
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Julie Powell |
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7044a4b
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So the end may be a long time coming, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a way of sneaking up on you.
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Julie Powell |
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b8a172c
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Without the Project I was nothing but a secretary on a road to nowhere, drifting toward frosted hair and menthol addiction.
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humor
secretary
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Julie Powell |
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4945439
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If I had thought the beef marrow might be a hell of a lot of work for not much difference, I needn't have worried. The taste of the marrow is rich, meaty, intense in a nearly-too-much way. In my increasingly depraved state, I could think of nothing at first but that it tasted like really good sex. But there was something more than that, even. What it really tastes like is life, well lived. Of course the cow I got marrow from had a fairly cr..
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sex
life
marrow
cows
meat
cooking
food
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Julie Powell |
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64b0b66
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The road to hell is paved with leeks and potatoes
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Julie Powell |
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5d3478f
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A new enterprise awaits. It hangs before you like fruit on a tree.
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Julie Powell |
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4c36b7f
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It was only once I was in the car ... that the only two reasons I hadn't joined right in with the loon with the gray crew cut, beating my head and screaming "Fuck!" in primal syncopation, were (1) I'd be embarrassed and (2) I didn't want to get my cute vintage suit any dirtier than it already was. Performance anxiety and a dry-cleaning bill, those were the only things keeping me from stark raving lunacy. "
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Julie Powell |
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63b51a1
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And I realized that, for this night at least, I didn't much care if anyone was the marrying kind or not - not even me. Who could tell? We none of us knew for sure WHAT kind we were, exactly, but as long as were the kind that could sit around eating together and having a lovely time, that was enough.
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Julie Powell |
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1bf89cc
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I began to ponder; this life we had for ourselves, Eric and I, it felt like the opposite of Potage Parmentier. It was easy enough to keep on with the soul-sucking jobs; at least it saved having to make a choice. But how much longer could I take such an easy life? Quicksand was easy. Hell, death was easy. Maybe that's why my synapses had started snapping at the sight of potatoes and leeks in the Korean deli. Maybe that was what was plucking ..
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Julie Powell |
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56acc18
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There, I was just a secretary-shaped confederation of atoms, fighting the inevitability of mediocrity and decay. But here, in the Juliaverse... energy was never lost, merely converted from one form to another. Here, I took butter and cream and meat and eggs and I made delicious sustenance.
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humor
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Julie Powell |
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1ab1afa
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Maybe I needed to make like a potato, winnow myself down, be part of something that was not easy, just simple.
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Julie Powell |
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9d816e2
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I didn't understand for a long time, but what attracted me to was the deeply buried aroma of hope and discovery of fulfillment in it. I thought I was using the Book to learn to cook French food, but really I was learning to sniff out the secret doors of possibility.
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Julie Powell |
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770dfa5
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Fiddling with damp tarragon left me so intensely irritated that when I was done I had to stick the ramekin/mise en place bowls back in the fridge and go watch both the episode where Xander is possessed by a demon and the one where Giles regresses to his outrageously sexy teen self and has sex with Buffy's mom, just to get over it.
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Julie Powell |
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13d44df
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For stalker food, Martha Stewart is the woman to go to.
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Julie Powell |
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f3dad7a
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I took a bite of lobster meat with rice. It was quite tasty. 'Arguing the morality of slaughter will send you into a tailspin of self-loathing every time.' 'Unless you're a vegan.' 'Uh-huh. But then you're a vegan and you don't count.
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funny
vegan
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Julie Powell |
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d9e69d5
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I have never looked to religion for comfort - belief is just not in my genes. But reading - childishly simple and dauntingly complex, incantatory and comforting - I thought this was what prayer must feel like. Sustenance bound up with anticipation and want. Reading was like reading pornographic Bible verses.
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Julie Powell |
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26e5c9c
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Maybe if the men in my life weren't always making smart-ass comments, they wouldn't have to worry about bruises so much.
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Julie Powell |
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4bac85a
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There are dinner parties ruined by guests, and there are dinner parties ruined by hosts, and then there are dinner parties when everyone contributes to the disaster.
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Julie Powell |
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a60b6a8
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Everyone knows there are foods that are sexy to eat. What they don't talk about so much is foods that are sexy to make.
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Julie Powell |
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925fffa
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You know that dejection that comes upon you when you realize that the person you're talking to might as well be from Jupiter, for all the chance you have of making them get what you're saying? I hate that.
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Julie Powell |
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0b0e1d7
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I never really even tried. But if I'm not a New York actress, what am I? I'm a person who takes a subway from the outer boroughs to lower Manhattan office every morning, who spends her days answering phones and doing copying, who is too disconsolate when she gets back to her apartment at night to do anything but sit on the couch and stare vacantly at reality TV shows until she falls asleep. Oh Godm it really was true, wasn't it? I really wa..
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Julie Powell |
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9fa6937
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Which just goes to show, I guess, that dinner parties are like everything else - not as fragile as we think they are.
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truthful
witty
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Julie Powell |
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207b7d1
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Sometimes, if you want to be happy, you've got to run away to Bath and marry a punk rocker.
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inspirational
julie-julia
julie-powell
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Julie Powell |
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ae9ae12
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My brother wrote another refrigerator magnet poem, when he was probably nineteen or twenty: 'When the flood comes/ I will swim to a symphony/ go by boat to some picture show/ and maybe I will forget about you.' How did he know way, way back then? How is it I know only now?
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Julie Powell |
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d1fc3d1
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The powdered sugar had caramelized and blackened into a sucking tar pit in which my ladyfingers languished like so many sunk mastadons.
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Julie Powell |
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4f55cb5
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Unfortunately, Martha's recipes, though suitably complex, fall a tad short if you're looking for aphrodisiac cooking, perhaps only because everything about a Martha recipe, from the font it's printed in to the call for sanding sugar, with appended notes on where to find such a thing, simply screams Martha.
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Julie Powell |
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91cde3a
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Performance anxiety and a dry-cleaning bill; those were the only things keeping me from stark raving lunacy.
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Julie Powell |
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a1311d7
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The thing you learn with Potage Parmentier is that "simple" is not exactly the same as easy."
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Julie Powell |
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29c6c7a
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One theory on cannibals, of course, is that they eat parts of their slain enemies to benefit from that person's greatest assets - their strength, their courage. Then there's that thing they do in Germany. You heard about that, didn't you? Some man over there agreed to let another man cut off his penis, cook it, then feed it to him - now, what in hell was that all about? What did he think the taste of his stir-fried cock would tell him about..
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Julie Powell |
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105a5c0
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These are the times when we aficionados of the gas stove know we are on the side of God.
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Julie Powell |
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aaaeeb3
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There is a law out there, if not of thermodynamics then of something equally primary and inescapable, that explains why everything from instant messaging to fabulous sex to aspic can in the end be defined as an illustration of the futility of existence. And it really, really sucks.
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Julie Powell |
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bb1aea9
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I'm the kind of person, who, when bored or unhappy, either drinks myself into oblivion or cooks very unhealthy things; Sally is the kind of person who, when bored or unhappy, goes jogging or cleans the bathroom with a toothbrush or matriculates at rabbinical school.
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Julie Powell |
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e9364b5
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Kiedy nie wierzy sie niebo, smierc jest stuprocentowym Koncem. Choc to sliczna mysl, nie wierze, ze Julia je w raju Sole Meuniere z Paulem. Wierze, ze jej cialo zostalo pogrzebane - pod bardzo fajnym nagrobkiem, nawiasem mowiac, ciekawe, czy zgadniecie, jakie ma epitafium - a mozg, serce, poczucie humoru i doswiadczenie, ktore sprawily, ze to cialo bylo Julia, znikly. Wszystko, co zostalo, znajduje sie w naszych wspomnieniach. Ale to tez ja..
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Julie Powell |