Ruth Reichl Quotes

We're so stuck in our heads with social media that we don't get to meet people and go out to have a joint experience unless we go to a live event, like the theatre.

There is something profoundly satisfying about sharing a meal. Eating together, breaking bread together, is one of the oldest and most fundamentally unifying of human experiences.

All those chemicals that create empathy only work when you are in a room together.

I force people to have coffee with me, just because I don't trust that a friendship can be maintained without any other senses besides a computer or cellphone screen.

Storytelling in general is a communal act. Throughout human history, people would gather around, whether by the fire or at a tavern, and tell stories. One person would chime in, then another, maybe someone would repeat a story they heard already but with a different spin. It's a collective process.

I am a partisan for conversation. To make room for it, I see some first, deliberate steps. At home, we can create sacred spaces: the kitchen, the dining room. We can make our cars 'device-free zones.' We can demonstrate the value of conversation to our children. And we can do the same thing at work.

Food is kind of the conduit that brings people together.

I hope to use food as a way to connect with people.

People are tweeting, texting, and e-mailing - and not connecting. There are very few ways for communities to come together. It happens at concerts and at sporting events.

I feel we have the opportunity of being part of a new and emerging category for human co-experience.

Eating well, being around the table with the family or friends or relatives - it doesn't get any better.

The way people connected with wine intrigued me and I wanted to be a part of it.

You walk into a restaurant these days, and what you see is everyone with their phone next to them. That is terrible. Instead of concentrating on the relationship, on the needs and activities and interests of the other person, they are constantly looking at their phone.

In such a fast-paced world, gathering people around a table to share a meal allows everything to slow down. I would ask people to sit at least once a week around a table and just enjoy each other's company. Give them the time to talk, laugh, and fill their bellies. It seems like a small thing, but it can bring so much joy to so many people.

Alone-sex didn't count. It's like the difference between thinking to yourself or having a good conversation with someone--the pleasure is in the exchange.

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.

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink.

One of the things that any kind of studies bring out is that the mere act of schooling - getting together, the organization involved, going to classes on time, and there're things being taught, sitting down with others with different backgrounds, chatting with them, and, sometimes when there are big barriers, eating together when there are school meals, which are big things together with a big social impact - they themselves have a major effect.

My big thing is people. I just love people in my life.

When you're at dinner with somebody and they are on their phone. I think there's that lost art of conversation and so I just always try to keep my phone far away from me when I'm with people.

The best talk is artless, the talk of people trying to reassure or comfort themselves, women in the sun, grouped around baby carriages, talking about their weeks in the hospital or the way meat has gone up, or men in saloons, talking to combat the loneliness everyone feels.

I've talked to nearly 30,000, people on this show, and all 30,000, had one thing in common: They all wanted validation...I would tell you that every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire.

Three days of uninterrupted company in a vehicle will make you better acquainted with another, than one hour's conversation with him every day for three years.

Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life.

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.