Dinner Table Quotes - Page 4

• A comma . . . catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling, and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table.

  Pico Iyer

  Sweet, Rivers, Mind

  Pico Iyer (2011). “Tropical Classical: Essays from Several Directions”, p.431, Vintage

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• Some friends of theirs had rented their house for several months to an interior decorator. When they returned, they discovered that their entire library had been reorganized by color and size. Shortly thereafter, the decorator met with a fatal automobile accident. I confess that when this story was told, everyone around the dinner table concurred that justice had been served.

  Anne Fadiman

  Color, Justice, House

  Anne Fadiman (2011). “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader”, p.5, Macmillan

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• Highland werewolves had a reputation for doing atrocious and highly unwarranted *things*, like wearing smoking jackets to the dinner table.

  Gail Carriger

  Smoking, Tables, Dinner

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• Oh, Zoe Kazan - I'd move back to Brooklyn for her. She makes me happy with my life. Knowing her, being at her dinner table, going on a walk with her is the best of all possible worlds.

  Michelle Williams

  Moving, Knowing, Brooklyn

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• I've been really opinionated my whole life. I was raised to be opinionated. I was raised to debate at the dinner table - my father demanded it - and you had to be able to debate in a confident and clear way.

  Jeanine Tesori

  Father, Tables, Dinner

  "Composer Jeanine Tesori on Her Artistic Process and Rewarding Female Ambition". Interview with Victoria Myers, www.indiewire.com. March 27, 2015.

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• For me, being on set is no different than being at a dinner table or riding the subway next to someone; inevitably their life story is always more compelling than most ads in magazines and most commercials and reality TV and all the stuff we're sold and told is valuable.

  Victoria Mahoney

  Reality, Tables, Dinner

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked.

  Junot Diaz

  Writing, Eight, Bed

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• I could stand on my head and flick the bean right there at the dinner table and my mom would be all, "Honey, Christmas is family time, we should be together" and make me finish in front of everyone.

  Christopher Moore

  Mom, Together, Would Be

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• Public opinion should not be confused with popular sentiment. Popular sentiment is what people say to one another around their dinner tables. Popular opinion is what they say to callers from polling organizations.

  Richard Brookhiser

  Confused, Organization, People

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• I work hard. I focus on myself and putting food on my dinner table before anything else. I don't worry about other artists. Worrying about the next person in a negative way is the wrong way to be.

  Meek Mill

  Hard Work, Artist, Worry

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• There is a list of things Im not allowed to discuss at the dinner table! I am extraordinarily passionate about the Black Death, which is not something most people are into.

  Mira Grant

  People, Black, Passionate

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• The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth.

  S. I. Hayakawa

  Political, Voting, Identity

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• At home I used to spend calm, pleasant nights with my family. My mother knit scarves for the neighborhood kids. My father helped Caleb with his homework. There was a fire in the fireplace and peace in my heart, as I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, and everything was quiet. I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.

  Veronica Roth

  Mother, Hurt, Father

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• I'm sitting at the dinner table, wearing my future mother-in-law's underwear. It's like some twisted dream that you wake up and thinkL Crikey Moses! Thank God that didn't really happen!

  Sophie Kinsella

  Mother, Dream, Law

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• I rushed us out of your parents' house because I didn't think I could manage two hours at the dinner table with everyone focused on Joe Loosey's joystick sitting in the refrigerator next to the applesauce.

  Janet Evanovich

  Thinking, Two, House

  Janet Evanovich (2001). “Three Plums In One: One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly”, p.419, Simon and Schuster

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• Sunday, January 27, 1884. -- There was another story in the paper a week or so since. A gentleman had a favourite cat whom he taught to sit at the dinner table where it behaved very well. He was in the habit of putting any scraps he left onto the cat's plate. One day puss did not take his place punctually, but presently appeared with two mice, one of which it placed on its master's plate, the other on its own.

  Beatrix Potter

  Cat, Sunday, Two

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• What is love?” “I don’t know.” “Love is the name given to the bond Kemal feels with Füsun whenever they travel along highways or sidewalks; visit houses, gardens, or rooms; or whenever he watches her sitting in tea gardens and restaurants, and at dinner tables.” “Hmmm … that’s a lovely answer,~ But isn’t love what you feel when you can’t see me?” “Under those circumstances, it becomes a terrible obsession, an illness.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Love Is, Garden, Names

  Orhan Pamuk (2011). “The Museum of Innocence”, p.592, Faber & Faber

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• As a child, I probably knew phrases that other children didn't known, like "pitocin drip" or "myocardial infarction." Some kind of knowledge was always in the air. My parents would always talk about science at the dinner table, saying something about this patient or some other patient. So I guess for a nanosecond in early high school, I thought about going into medicine.

  M. Night Shyamalan

  Children, School, Air

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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• The sluices of the grog-shop are fed from the wine-glasses in the parlor, and there is a lineal descent from the gentleman who hiccoughs at his elegant dinner-table to the sot who makes a bed of the gutter.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Wine, Glasses, Gentleman

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• I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.

  Veronica Roth

  Peace, Hurt, Boys

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• The lurking tragedy: The chances are that an accident will some day happen to you at a friend's dinner table ... As long as water and coffee and jelly exist, a certain percentage of each will necessarily be overturned upon a like number of snowy white tablecloths. Usually the tragedy is really no one's fault.

  Mary Elizabeth Clark

  Coffee, White, Numbers

  Mary Elizabeth Clark, Margery Closey Quigley (1939). “Etiquette Every Child Should Know”

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• I am a stickler for good manners, and I believe that treating other people well is a lost art. In the workplace, at the dinner table, and walking down the street--we are confronted with choices on how to treat people nearly every waking moment. Over time these choices define who we are and whether we have a lot of friends and allies or none.

  Tim Gunn

  Art, Believe, People

  "Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making It Work". Book by Tim Gunn, abcnews.go.com. September 7, 2010.

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• Teenagers talk about the idea of having each other's 'full attention.' They grew up in a culture of distraction. They remember their parents were on cell phones when they were pushed on swings as toddlers. Now, their parents text at the dinner table and don't look up from their BlackBerry when they come for end-of-school day pickup.

  Sherry Turkle

  Teenager, School, Phones

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• I've never been to a dinner party where everyone at the dinner table didn't say something funny.

  Lorrie Moore

  Party, Tables, Dinner

  "Moore's better blues". www.cnn.com.

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• My material is as new as anything on the dinner table. What difference does it make if I'm 70 or if I'm 20? The audience knows they aren't getting any old stories from me.

  Jackie Mason

  Differences, Doe, Stories

  "Everything Bold Is New Again: An Interview with Jackie Mason". Interview with Bernard Chapin, spectator.org. April 18, 2007.

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