Julia Carolyn Child was an American cooking teacher, author, and television personality. Profoundly inspirational Julia Child quotes will get you through anything when the going gets tough and help you succeed in every aspect of life.
Famous Julia Child Quotes
Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it. – Julia Child
The secret of a happy marriage is finding the right person. You know they’re right if you love to be with them all the time. – Julia Child
The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken. – Julia Child
Moderation. Small helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets of happiness and good health. – Julia Child
Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper. Everything can have drama if it’s done right. Even a pancake. – Julia Child
I think one of the terrible things today is that people have this deathly fear of food: fear of eggs, say, or fear of butter. Most doctors feel that you can have a little bit of everything. – Julia Child
The egg can be your best friend if you just give it the right break – Julia Child
Many of the delicious soups you eat in French homes and little restaurants are made just this way, with a leek-and-potato base to which leftover vegetables or sauces and a few fresh items are added. – Julia Child
I believe in red meat. I often said: red meat and gin. – Julia Child
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
Noodles are not only amusing but delicious. – Julia Child
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
Learn how to cook! That’s the way to save money. You don’t save it buying hamburger helpers, and prepared foods; you save it by buying fresh foods in season or in large supply, when they are cheapest and usually best, and you prepare them from scratch at home. Why pay for someone else’s work, when if you know how to do it, you can save all that money for yourself? – Julia Child
The problem for cookery-bookery writers like me is to understand the extent of our readers’ experience. I hope have solved that riddle in my books by simply telling everything. The experienced cook will know to skip through the verbiage, but the explanations will be there for those who still need them. – Julia Child
I don’t think about whether people will remember me or not. I’ve been an ok person. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve taught people a thing or two. That’s what’s important. – Julia Child
There is nothing worse than grilled vegetables. – Julia Child
Any disaster is a learning process. – Julia Child
Food like love is a deeply emotional matter. – Julia Child
It’s hard to imagine a civilization without onions; in one form or another their flavor blends into almost everything in the meal except the desert. – Julia Child
the more experience you have, the more interesting cooking is because you know what can happen to the food. In the beginning you can look at a chicken and it doesn’t mean much, but once you have done some cooking you can see in that chicken a parade of things you will be able to create. – Julia Child
I never feel lonely in the kitchen. Food is very friendly. – Julia Child
Celebrity has its uses. I can always get a seat in any restaurant. – Julia Child
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 done. – Julia Child
Pro-choice is the only way to be– because women are human beings, after all, and should be treated as such. – Julia Child
I was a Republican until I got to New York and had to live on $18 a week. It was then that I became a Democrat. – Julia Child
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
Remember, you are all alone in the kitchen and no one can see you. – Julia Child
I’m afraid that surprise, shock, and regret is the fate of authors when they finally see themselves on the page. – Julia Child
I’m a beet freak. I put them in the pressure cooker. – Julia Child
It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate – you know someone’s fingers have been all over it. – Julia Child
You must have discipline to have fun. – Julia Child
A passionate interest in what you do is the secret of enjoying life…whether it is helping old people or children, or making cheese or growing earthworms. – Julia Child
As you get older, you shouldn’t waste time drinking bad wine. – Julia Child
Cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music. And cooking draws upon your every talent–science, mathematics, energy, history, experience–and the more experience you have, the less likely are your experiments to end in drivel and disaster. The more you know, the more you can create. – Julia Child
The dinner hour is a sacred, happy time when everyone should be together and relaxed. – Julia Child
The more you know, the more you can create. There’s no end to imagination in the kitchen. – Julia Child
Always start out with a larger pot than what you think you need. – Julia Child
Eating is the secret to good cooking. – Julia Child
Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again – Julia Child
Anything that says ‘healthy’ I say away from… Giving up butter, for instance, means that in about two years you will be covered in dandruff. – Julia Child
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
It’s fun to get together and have something good to eat at least once a day. That’s what human life is all about – enjoying things. – Julia Child
Cooking well doesn’t mean cooking fancy. – Julia Child
Being tall is an advantage, especially in business. People will always remember you. And if you’re in a crowd, you’ll always have some clean air to breathe. – Julia Child
When you flip anything, you really you just have to have the courage of your convictions. – Julia Child
If you’re not ready to fail, you’re not going to learn how to cook. – Julia Child
Noncooks think it’s silly to invest two hours’ work in two minutes’ enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet. – Julia Child
In spite of food fads, fitness programs, and health concerns, we must never lose sight of a beautifully conceived meal. – Julia Child
I enjoy cooking with wine, sometimes I even put it in the food I’m cooking. – Julia Child
I think careful cooking is love, don’t you? – Julia Child
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
People who love to eat are always the best people. – Julia Child
The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude. – Julia Child
How lovely life can be if one takes time to be friendly. – Julia Child
You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces – just good food from fresh ingredients. – Julia Child
The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook. – Julia Child
One of the important requirements for learning how to cook is that you also learn how to eat. – Julia Child
I think every woman should have a blowtorch. – Julia Child
Dining with one’s friends and beloved family is certainly one of life’s primal and most innocent delights, one that is both soul-satisfying and eternal. – Julia Child
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
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
A party without cake is really just a meeting. – Julia Child
With enough butter, anything is good – Julia Child
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
I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate. – Julia Child
Cooking is one failure after another, and that’s how you finally learn. – Julia Child
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
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
Life itself is the proper binge. – Julia Child
How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex? – Julia Child
It is hard to imagine a civilization without onions. – Julia Child
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
To be able to serve and to eat a whole fish, especially a trout, is part of civilized dining. This applies particularly to the young, who should take to it as soon as they can handle knife and fork; this is a fine way for them to begin taking pride in themselves and their abilities. – Julia Child
The war broke out, and I wanted to do something to aid my country in a time of crisis. I was too tall for the WACs and WAVES, but eventually joined the OSS and set out into the world looking for adventure. – Julia Child
I was lucky to marry Paul. He was a great inspiration, his enthusiasm about wine and food helped to shape my tastes, and his encouragement saw me through discouraging moments. I never would have had my career without Paul Child. – Julia Child
In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport. – Julia Child
In the 1960s, you could eat anything you wanted, and of course, people were smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, and there was no talk about fat and anything like that, and butter and cream were rife. Those were lovely days for gastronomy, I must say. – Julia Child
Animals that we eat are raised for food in the most economical way possible, and the serious food producers do it in the most humane way possible. I think anyone who is a carnivore needs to understand that meat does not originally come in these neat little packages. – Julia Child
As we say in the American Institute of Wine and Food, small helpings, no seconds. A little bit of everything. No snacking. And have a good time. – Julia Child
The art of bread making can become a consuming hobby, and no matter how often and how many kinds of bread one has made, there always seems to be something new to learn. – Julia Child
The perfect dressing is essential to the perfect salad, and I see no reason whatsoever for using a bottled dressing, which may have been sitting on the grocery shelf for weeks, even months – even years. – Julia Child
Usually, one’s cooking is better than one thinks it is. – Julia Child
Because of media hype and woefully inadequate information, too many people nowadays are deathly afraid of their food, and what does fear of food do to the digestive system? … I, for one, would much rather swoon over a few thin slices of prime beefsteak, or one small serving of chocolate mousse, or a sliver of foie gras than indulge to the full on such nonentities as fat-free gelatin puddings. – Julia Child
When I got to France I realized I didn’t know very much about food at all. I’d never had a real cake. I’d had those cakes from cake mixes or the ones that have a lot of baking powder in them. A really good French cake doesn’t have anything like that in it – it’s all egg power. – Julia Child
I wouldn’t keep him around long if I didn’t feed him well. – Julia Child
In my generation, except for a few people who’d gone into banking or nursing or something like that, middle-class women didn’t have careers. You were to marry and have children and be a nice mother. You didn’t go out and do anything. I found that I got restless. – Julia Child
I fell in love with the public, the public fell in love with me, and I tried to keep it that way. – Julia Child
I found that the recipes in most – in all – the books I had were really not adequate. They didn’t tell you enough… I won’t do anything unless I’m told why I’m doing it. So I felt that we needed fuller explanations so that if you followed one of those recipes, it should turn out exactly right. – Julia Child
Someone may offer you a freshly caught whole large fish, like a salmon or striped bass. Don’t panic – take it! – Julia Child
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
I don’t believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make…. 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. – Julia Child
As a girl, I had zero interest in the stove. I’ve always had a healthy appetite, especially for the wonderful meat and the fresh produce of California, but I was never encouraged to cook and just didn’t see the point in it. – Julia Child
I had my first French meal and I never got over it. It was just marvelous. We had oysters and a lovely dry white wine. And then we had one of those lovely scalloped dishes and the lovely, creamery buttery sauce. Then we had a roast duck and I don’t know what else. – Julia Child
In department stores, so much kitchen equipment is bought indiscriminately by people who just come in for men’s underwear. – Julia Child
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
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
In the 1970s we got nouvelle cuisine, in which a lot of the old rules were kicked over. And then we had cuisine minceur, which people mixed up with nouvelle cuisine but was actually fancy diet cooking. – Julia Child
When you have a few cake formulas and filling ideas in your repertoire, you will find that it’s pretty much an assembly job – you can mix and match a different way every time. – Julia Child
I hate organized religion. I think you have to love thy neighbor as thyself. I think you have to pick your own God and be true to him. I always say ‘him’ rather than ‘her.’ Maybe it’s because of my generation, but I don’t like the idea of a female God. I see God as a benevolent male. – Julia Child
In Paris and later in Marseille, I was surrounded by some of the best food in the world, and I had an enthusiastic audience in my husband, so it seemed only logical that I should learn how to cook ‘la cuisine bourgeoise’ – good, traditional French home cooking. – Julia Child
What a marvelous resource soup is for the thrifty cook – it solves the ham-bone and lamb-bone problems, the everlasting Thanksgiving turkey, the extra vegetables. – Julia Child
She answered, encouraging my interest in food and the food industry. – Julia Child
He had us make some toast points, and he told us to crush the (slow-roasted) garlic out of its skin and spread it on the toast along with the chicken. Roasting tamed the garlic and gave it a lovely taste. It was absolutely delicious. – Julia Child
I was kind of an innocent hayseed from a middle-class, utterly nonintellectual background. – Julia Child
I’d like for people to be able to go to the universities and get a degree in fine arts-gastronomy. – Julia Child
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
I was a romantic, messy thinker. I was raised with very conservative beliefs, but that was a long time ago. – Julia Child
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
I’m not wild about those twenty-four hour marinades – Julia Child
My father was in charge of managing the farm. – Julia Child
Cooking was taken with such seriousness in France that even ordinary chefs were proud of their profession. That’s what appealed to me. – Julia Child
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
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
I love to teach – that’s my role. – Julia Child
I love root vegetables: carrots, parsnips, and turnips. – Julia Child
I think anyone who is a carnivore needs to understand that meat does not originally come in these neat little packages. – Julia Child
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
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
She was my first cat ever, and I thought she was marvelous. – Julia Child
I have trouble with toast. Toast is very difficult. You have to watch it all the time or it burns up. – Julia Child
Freshness is essential. That makes all the difference. – Julia Child
Of course I made many boo-boos. At first this broke my heart, but then I came to understand that learning how to fix one’s mistakes, or live with them, was an important part of becoming a cook. – Julia Child
We should enjoy food and have fun. It is one of the simplest and nicest pleasures in life. – Julia Child
People who are not interested in food always seem rather dry and unloving and don’t have a real gusto for life. – Julia Child
Personally, I don’t think pure vegetarianism is a healthy lifestyle. I’ve often wondered to myself: Does a vegetarian look forward to dinner, ever? – Julia Child
You don’t spring into good cooking naked. You have to have some training. You have to learn how to eat. – Julia Child
If you don’t pick your audience, you’re lost because you’re not really talking to anybody. – Julia Child
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
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
We hit it off immediately, especially Helene, who was a ‘swallow-life-in-big-gulps’ kind of person. – Julia Child
I think the inner person is the most important…. I would like to see an invention that keeps the mind alert. That’s what is important. – Julia Child
Forget the cheap white wine: go to beef and gin! – Julia Child
I would happily die with a bottle of white Burgundy in my mouth, – Julia Child
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
Was it a sign of Creeping Decrepitude? – Julia Child
Tears mess up your makeup. – Julia Child
Wine is meant to be with food – that’s the point of it. – Julia Child
There are reasons, and then there are excuses. – Julia Child
Just how could a nation often be great if it’s bread tastes want Kleenex. – Julia Child
Without peanuts, it isn’t a cocktail party. – Julia Child
Cooking may be a creative art, but it’s also a wonderful full-time hobby. – Julia Child
