Barack Obama Quotes

And I find chopsticks frankly distressing. Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven't yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food?

You do not sew with a fork and I see no reason why you should eat with knitting needles.

You should be comfortable eating by yourself or in public.

There are generations of people who don't know how to eat properly.

I often look ridiculous in Japan. There's really no way to eat in Japan, particularly kaiseki in a traditional ryokan, without offending the Japanese horribly. Every gesture, every movement is just so atrociously wrong, and the more I try, the more hilarious it is.

I remember watching steak being cooked on TV and wanting to try it. As a special treat, my mother cooked it for me, and I thought this would be the time I would eat with a knife and fork. Alas, I ate it with chopsticks!

I was expected to sit at the table, learn how to eat properly.

I prefer the Chinese method of eating. You can do anything at the table except arm wrestle.

Women eat while they are talking; men talk while they are eating.

If you start eating with your mouth open - I can't stand it! I was out to dinner with a girl, and she started chomping on her food. You could see everything she was eating. I was like, 'So when do you want to go home?'

If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they'd starve to death.

If you can't tell a spoon from a ladle, then you're fat!

It occured to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain.

I eat with my hands when I am home alone!

Good manners: The noise you don't make when you're eating soup.

On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners.

The old injunction 'Don't talk with your mouth full' is based on the presumption that, however multifunctional a mouth may be, it should only perform one job at a time. Humans have found a way around this limitation in the form of food writing.

Eating American-style, you put the knife down and clang. Continental is silent and efficient.

Kids today and for the last 20 years have held the fork and knife in unbelievable ways. They hold the fork with a fist and the knife like a saw and they shovel it in. It doesn't matter to them which way they hold their knife and fork. They eat every which way. I'm amazed they get food into their mouths at all.

I got so used to using chopsticks that using a fork and knife is weird.

I don't like people's table manners. That really puts you off eating food.

Sometimes you go into Nando's, and you want to tuck into the chicken wings with your fingers, but you know someone is watching you, so you don't. I'm sat there thinking, 'If these chicken wings were at home, they would get demolished!' But I've got to use a knife and fork, and you end up saying: 'Could I get a bag to take these home, please?'

It took me a little while to remember how to use a fork. You know, we don't use forks in the penitentiary. You get a spoon.

So Stapes conducted a dinner for just the two of us, then informed me of a dozen small but important mistakes I had made. Setting down a dirty utensil was considered crude, for example. That meant it was perfectly acceptable to lick one's knife clean. In fact, if you didn't want to dirty your napkin it was the only seemly thing to do.

Always chew on your pretzels before you swallow.