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Alice B. Toklas
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“Illness sets the mind free sometimes to roam and surmise.”
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“... like camels, we lived on our past.”
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“What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander but is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the guinea hen.”
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“... It was at this time, then [during the Occupation], that murder in the kitchen began. The first victim was a lively carp brought to the kitchen in a covered basket from which nothing could escape. ... I carefully, deliberately found the base of its vertebral column and plunged the knife in. I let go my grasp and looked to see what had happened. Horror of horrors. The carp was dead, killed, assassinated, murdered in the first, second and third degree. Limp, I fell into a chair, with my hands still unwashed reached for a cigarette, lighted it and waited for the police to come and take me into custody.”
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“Experience is never at bargain price.”
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“There is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as thrilling, as gathering the vegetables one has grown.”
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“These [recipes] are very nice ways to cook string beans but they interfere with the poor vegetable's leading a life of its own.”
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“I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.”
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“Tomorrow an ex-G.I. is calling for me in an ex-Jeep to take Basket to the vet's — he has to have something done to what if he were a chicken would go over the fence last.”
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“... the French write plays and paint as naturally as we play jazz — it's just a national gift.”
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“I have just learned a delicious French usage. On wedding invitations when they say the mass is at noon they mean one o'clock --when they say at noon precise they mean half after twelve — and when they say at very precisely noon they mean noon.”
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“It is as Gertrude used to say unfamiliarity that breeds contempt.”
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“Some time all kinds of letters will be published to the ineffable delight of endless readers.”
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“Please do not send me a catalog. I am at the age now where I am destroying papers rather than gathering them.”
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“[On Gertrude Stein:] About Baby's last words. She said upon waking from a sleep — What is the question. And I didnt answer thinking she was not completely awakened. Then she said again — What is the question and before I could speak she went on — If there is no question then there is no answer. And she turned and went to sleep again. Were they not a summing up of her life and perhaps a vision of the future — often they mean that to me and then they are a comfort.”
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“As Gertrude always used to say as soon as you have disturbed someone you can find the missing object yourself.”
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“... I hear Francis has presented you with a grandson. Isn't he wonderful — he thinks of everything.”
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“Sex is perhaps like culture — a luxury that only becomes an art after generations of leisurely acquaintance. Why we scarcely approach either as individuals — it's mass propulsion still!”
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“Haven't you learned yet that it isn't age but lack of experience that makes us fall off ladders or have radiators fall on us.”
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“... the past is not gone — nor is Gertrude ...”
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“[On Gertrude Stein:] ... we are agreed that the reminiscences should be centered on Baby and her work. That mine be discarded — possibly to throw light on her method. You agree — dont you? I am nothing but the memory of her.”
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“Dawn comes slowly but dusk is rapid.”
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“This has been a most wonderful evening. Gertrude has said things tonight it will take her ten years to understand.”
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“[On Gabrielle, her house servant:] She has inspired moments a half dozen times a year. The rest of the time she is spiteful like a petty criminal. If it didn't take so much time it might be diverting.”
Alice B. Toklas, U.S.-born French writer
(1877 - 1967)
Full name: Alice Babette Toklas.