Quotation Canapés: No. 1 – All About Food

Quote #1

We get used to things too easily. You think something’s tasty the first time you eat it, but then you start taking it for granted. Never forget your first impressions.

― Hisashi Kashiwai, The Kamogawa Food Detectives

Quote #2

When I was scared, I ran to cakes, because cakes felt safe, private and celebratory. Cakes never fought back.

― Kiese Laymon, Heavy: An American Memoir

Quote #3

When I’m eating good butter I feel somehow as though I were falling.

― Asako Yuzuki, Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder

Quote #4

Black bears rarely attack. But here’s the thing. Sometimes they do. All bears are agile, cunning and immensely strong, and they are always hungry. If they want to kill you and eat you, they can, and pretty much whenever they want. That doesn’t happen often, but – and here is the absolutely salient point – once would be enough.

― Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

Quote #5

For Elizabeth, cooking wasn’t some preordained feminine duty. As she’d told Calvin, cooking was chemistry. That’s because cooking actually is chemistry.

― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry (English/Spanish)

About this series

Back in 2019, an article appeared on this site that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. The Book Club Guide to Literary Libations was a funny listicle that suggested pairings of drinks with book club books. The problem with that post? There’s only one! But now, our AI friends could whip up a million more pairing suggestions in no time (virgin and alcoholic). And so in deference to their unlimited genius and the sense of ennui that induces, perhaps our time is better spent elsewhere.

What if we were a little less literal and a little more literary? (Feel free to print that on a T-shirt.) Could an opening salvo of actual bits of literature be the “appetizers” to the “main dish” at a book club event?

The goal of this bite-sized series (subsequent articles will not contain all this extra rambling) is to share not only the titles in the book club resource, as with the author suggestion series, but a little of their contents and the possibility of further, hopefully unexpected reading. Just something to whet the appetite!

The “rules”

• Each Quotation Canapés post contains five quotes joined by a theme.
• All quotes are found within the holdings of the Colorado Book Club Resource.
• Each quote is bite-sized, meaning it can be absorbed in roughly the same time it takes to eat the average canapé (this is not a literal rule as, of course, we all enjoy our hors d’oeuvres at different speeds).
• Quotes are chosen from a variety of genres, including both fiction and nonfiction.