Top 160 Julia Child Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The shellfish thing is very scary. You have to know the people you buy from and exactly where their wholesalers are getting the fish from.”

— Julia Child

102. “In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.”

— Julia Child

103. “I was going to be a great woman novelist. Then the war came along and I think it’s hard for young people today, don’t you, to realize that when World War II happened we were dying to go and help our country.”

— Julia Child

104. “Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music.”

— Julia Child

105. “My mother was independent. She had grown up in Dalton and Pittsfield, in western Massachusetts, and she was one of the first women drivers in that area.”

— Julia Child

106. “Without peanuts, it isn’t a cocktail party.”

— Julia Child

107. “I have trouble with toast. Toast is very difficult. You have to watch it all the time or it burns up.”

— Julia Child

108. “I don’t use the word gourmet. The word doesn’t mean anything anymore. ‘Gourmet’ makes it sound like someone is putting sherry wine in the corn-flake casserole.”

— Julia Child

109. “I was in pure, flavorful heaven at the Cordon Bleu.”

— Julia Child

110. “You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made,” he said. “Even after you eat it, it stays with you – always.” I.”

— Julia Child

111. “But my favorite remained the basic roast chicken. What a deceptively simple dish. I had come to believe that one can judge the quality of a cook by his or her roast chicken. Above all, it should taste like chicken: it should be so good that even a perfectly simple, buttery roast should be a delight.”

— Julia Child

112. “The sweetness and generosity and politeness and gentleness and humanity of the French had shown me how lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly.”

— Julia Child

113. “I’m awfully sorry for people who are taken in by all of today’s dietary mumbo jumbo. They are not getting any enjoyment out of their food.”

— Julia Child

114. “If you’re buying tomatoes pick them up and smell them-they should have a lovely perfume. They need to be kept at fifty degrees or above, particularly during the growing season, because that’s when they develop their flavor.”

— Julia Child

115. “People were hysterical about Communism the way people today are hysterical about flag burning. I’m really against these people who try to show that they’re great patriots, because they’re not thinking, they’re just being hysterical.”

— Julia Child

116. “Just speak very loudly and quickly, and state your position with utter conviction, as the French do, and you’ll have a marvelous time!”

— Julia Child

117. “In department stores, so much kitchen equipment is bought indiscriminately by people who just come in for men’s underwear.”

— Julia Child

118. “I think anyone who is a carnivore needs to understand that meat does not originally come in these neat little packages.”

— Julia Child

119. “Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again.”

— Julia Child

120. “If you drop the lamb, just pick it up. Who’s going to know?”

— Julia Child

121. “Sooner or later the public will forget you; the memory of you will fade. What’s important are the individuals you’ve influenced along the way.”

— Julia Child

122. “I still feel that French cooking is the most important in the world, one of the few that has rules. If you follow the rules, you can do pretty well.”

— Julia Child

123. “We ought to enjoy our food, we ought to take time and care and prepare it correctly, and we ought to have fun doing it and make it a communal event.”

— Julia Child

124. “I was never a spy. I was with the OSS organization. We had a number of women, but we were all office help.”

— Julia Child

125. “I had come to the conclusion that I must really be French, only no one had ever informed me of this fact. I loved the people, the food, the lay of the land, the civilized atmosphere, and the generous pace of life.”

— Julia Child

126. “Wine is meant to be with food – that’s the point of it.”

— Julia Child

127. “I was kind of an innocent hayseed from a middle-class, utterly nonintellectual background.”

— Julia Child

128. “Just like becoming an expert in wine, you learn by drinking it, the best you can afford.”

— Julia Child

129. “Because I’ve done a lot of television, I’m sort of a generalist. I’m not a pastry cook, but I’ve had to learn a certain amount about it. I’m not a baker, though I’ve had to learn how to do it. I’m sort of a general cook.”

— Julia Child

130. “When the war broke out I decided I would be very patriotic. Standing my full height. I presented myself to the Wacs and the to the Waves. And I was rejected – I was an inch too tall.”

— Julia Child

131. “Tears mess up your makeup.”

— Julia Child

132. “It is the Americans who have managed to crown minced beef as hamburger, and to send it round the world so that even the fussy French have taken to le boeuf hache, le hambourgaire.”

— Julia Child

133. “In spite of food fads, fitness programs, and health concerns, we must never lose sight of a beautifully conceived meal.”

— Julia Child

134. “I’m a beet freak. I put them in the pressure cooker.”

— Julia Child

135. “If a tourist enters a food stall thinking he’s going to be cheated, the salesman will sense this and obligingly cheat hi. But if a Frenchman senses that a visitor is delighted to be in his store, and takes a genuine interest in what is for sale, then he’ll just open up like a flower.”

— Julia Child

136. “In fact, I didn’t like traveling first class at all. Yes, it was nice to have a bathroom in a hotel and fine service at breakfast... but none of it seemed foreign enough for me. It was all so pleasantly bland that I felt as if I were back on the SS America. I don’t like it when everyone speaks perfect English; I’d much rather struggle with my phrasebook.”

— Julia Child

137. “Just like becoming an expert in wine–you learn by drinking it, the best you can afford–you learn about great food by finding the best there is, whether simply or luxurious. The you savor it, analyze it, and discuss it with your companions, and you compare it with other experiences.”

— Julia Child

138. “Eating is the secret to good cooking.”

— Julia Child

139. “She was my first cat ever, and I thought she was marvelous.”

— Julia Child

140. “I’d like for people to be able to go to the universities and get a degree in fine arts-gastronomy.”

— Julia Child

141. “I fell in love with the public, the public fell in love with me, and I tried to keep it that way.”

— Julia Child

142. “My father was in real estate, banking, and land management. As family life, it was very conventional, happy, and comfortable. We weren’t wealthy, but we were well-off.”

— Julia Child

143. “A cookbook is only as good as its poorest recipe.”

— Julia Child

144. “My father was in charge of managing the farm.”

— Julia Child

145. “I’m not wild about those twenty-four hour marinades.”

— Julia Child

146. “Cooking hasn’t yet been accepted as the art form it is. It should be on the level with any of the other art forms.”

— Julia Child

147. “The service was deft and understated, and the food was spectacular. It was expensive, but, as Paul said, “you are so hypnotized by everything there that you feel grateful as you pay the bill.”

— Julia Child

148. “The German birds didn’t taste as good as their French cousins, nor did the frozen Dutch chickens we bought in the local supermarkets. The American poultry industry had made it possible to grow a fine-looking fryer in record time and sell it at a reasonable price, but no one mentioned that the result usually tasted like the stuffing inside of a teddy bear.”

— Julia Child

149. “In France, Paul explained, good cooking was regarded as a combination of national sport and high art, and wine was always served with lunch and dinner. “The trick is moderation,” he said.”

— Julia Child

150. “I always try to buy just what I need. You get ideas as to what’s in season and what’s best. I think if you have a preconceived idea before shopping, that makes it difficult. You have to have an open mind.”

— Julia Child