Alice B. Toklas Quotations

As if a cookbook had anything to do with writing.

The first gatherings of the garden in May of salads, radishes and herbs made me feel like a mother about her baby - how could anything so beautiful be mine. And this emotion of wonder filled me for each vegetable as it was gathered every year. There is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as thrilling, as gathering the vegetables one has grown.

What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander, but it is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the Guinea hen.

Some time all kinds of letters will be published to the ineffable delight of endless readers.

Sex is perhaps like culture - a luxury that only becomes an art after generations of leisurely acquaintance. Why we scarcely approach either as individuals - it's mass propulsion still!

Illness sets the mind free sometimes to roam and surmise.

the French write plays and paint as naturally as we play jazz - it's just a national gift.

I have just learned a delicious French usage. On wedding invitations when they say the mass is at noon they mean one o'clock -when they say at noon precise they mean half after twelve - and when they say at very precisely noon they mean noon.

In the menu, there should be a climax and a culmination. Come to it gently. One will suffice.

There is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as thrilling, as gathering the vegetables one has grown.