1. Always remember: if you’re alone in the kitchen and you drop the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who’s going to know?

- Julia Child

2. Tears mess up your makeup.

- Julia Child

3. The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It’s doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile.

- Julia Child

4. One of the secrets, and pleasures, of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed.

- Julia Child

5. There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry- architecture being perhaps the least banal derivative of the latter.

- Julia Child

6. See, when I flipped it, I didn’t have the courage to do it the way I should’ve. But you can always pick it up, and if you’re alone in the kitchen, who is going to see? But the only way you learn how to flip things is just to flip them.

- Julia Child

7. If you’re in a good profession, it’s hard to get bored, because you’re never finished — there will always be work you haven’t yet done.

- Julia Child

8. To be a good cook you have to have a love of the good, a love of hard work, and a love of creating.

- Julia Child

9. If you don’t pick your audience, you’re lost because you’re not really talking to anybody.

- Julia Child

10. Remember, ‘No one’s more important than people!’ In other words, friendship is the most important thing—not career or housework, or one’s fatigue—and it needs to be tended and nurtured.

- Julia Child

11. You learn to cook so that you don’t have to be a slave to recipes. You get what’s in season and you know what to do with it.

- Julia Child

12. Of course, an old wine is like an old lady, and traveling can disturb her.

- Julia Child

13. Good french cooking cannot be produced by a zombie cook.

- Julia Child

14. You don’t spring into good cooking naked. You have to have some training. You have to learn how to eat.

- Julia Child

15. 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.

- Julia Child

16. It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate – you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.

- Julia Child

17. Everything can have drama if it’s done right. Even a pancake.

- Julia Child

18. Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need.

- Julia Child

19. 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

20. The only time to eat diet food is when you’re waiting for a steak to cook.

- Julia Child

21. We had a happy marriage because we were together all the time. We were friends as well as husband and wife. We just had a good time.

- Julia Child

22. The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.

- Julia Child

23. I enjoy cooking with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

- Julia Child

24. I believe in red meat. I’ve often said: red meat and gin.

- Julia Child

25. I think every woman should have a blowtorch.

- Julia Child

26. If everything doesn’t happen quite the way you’d like, it doesn’t make too much difference, because you can fix it.

- Julia Child

27. 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

28. People who love to eat are always the best people.

- Julia Child

29. In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.

- Julia Child

30. Well, all I know is this—nothing you ever learn is really wasted, and will sometime be used.

- Julia Child

31. Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed. Eh bien, tant pis. Usually one’s cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile, and learn from her mistakes.

- Julia Child

32. But I was a pure romantic, and only operating with half my burners turned on.

- Julia Child

33. I was 32 when I started cooking. Up until then, I just ate.

- Julia Child

34. Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verbalize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which cause me to back down from forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional at the expense of careful, ‘scientific’ though. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.

- Julia Child

35. You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made,’ [Chef Bugnard] said. ‘Even after you eat it, it stays with you – always.

- Julia Child

36. It is hard to imagine a civilization without onions.

- Julia Child

37. This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook — try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless and above all have fun!

- Julia Child

38. 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

39. I was in pure, flavorful heaven at the Cordon Bleu.

- Julia Child

40. How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?

- Julia Child

41. Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper.

- Julia Child

42. Nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should. Good results require that one take time and care.

- Julia Child

43. I’m not a chef. I think in this country, we use the term very loosely. I’m a cook and a teacher.

- Julia Child

44. The more you know, the more you can create. There’s no end to imagination in the kitchen.

- Julia Child

45. 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

46. You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces – just good food from fresh ingredients.

- Julia Child

47. Until I discovered cooking, I was never really interested in anything.

- Julia Child