Ruth Reichl Quotes

Writing about food is my default.

I think I wrote my first piece about food in 1978.

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down.

However, I was a restaurant critic at Chicago magazine before I worked at Esquire, and I've been a really enthusiastic home cook for a long time. It's just something I'm passionate about.

I had decided I wanted to write about food, and I knew the only way to do that is to speak with authority, which meant learning the language and knowing what that experience is like.

I was a foodie and I continue to be a foodie.

I've been fascinated by the world ever since I read 'Kitchen Confidential' by Anthony Bourdain. I've watched 'Top Chef' and watched interviews with chefs on 'Charlie Rose'... I thought they're really intriguing characters, and they really encapsulate that tension between vision and commerce, art and commerce.

I was only 24 years old when a lady called Sabina Sehgal Saikia - the then 'Delhi Times' editor - asked me to host the 'Times Food Guide Awards,' so it was with The 'Times of India' that my career began in this field.

Eating is one of the great beauties in life. One of my favorite recreations... eating with friends, the service, the ambience.

The Guardian's 'Word of Mouth' blog bridges the gap between blogging and serious food journalism.

When I was younger, I read all the great food memoirs, by M.F.K. Fisher and Laurie Colwin and Julia Child and Nicolas Freeling and Ruth Reichl, and felt flooded with a sense of comfort and safety.

You can be a decent critic if you know about food, but to be a really good one, you need to know about life.

M. F. K. Fisher was a wonder and a huge influence, and someone I got to know pretty well at the end of her life.

I don't think I've ever read a food piece or a food book.

The podcast most likely to encourage you to fully appreciate your food is the episode of BBC World Service's 'The Food Chain' in which Antonio Carluccio talks to Emily Thomas about his life in five dishes.

I have a lot of different passions. Food has been a constant through my whole life; it's something I've always had a very intrinsic passion toward and for, and I continue to learn about it, and I'm not going to let any type of negative comments dissuade me from wanting to pursue that, because I love it.

There's not a lot of things that I'm confident about in life, but the way I feel about food is my one thing that I really feel such a strong connection to.

I really love eating, so I love reading about food, and I religiously read the dining section in newspapers.

Food is a profound subject and one, incidentally, about which no writer lies.

English food writer Elizabeth David, cook and author Richard Olney and the owner of Domaine Tempier Lulu Peyraud have all really inspired the way I think about food.

Food was always a focus for us, lyrically.

I'm interested in food and sharing my passion with a community of like-minded people. All of the celebrity stuff that comes along with that is just an incidental byproduct of being able to do what I love for a living.

Everybody has their role in the food world and what they choose to appreciate. I'm not a fine dining chef. I appreciate it. I think Thomas Keller is amazing. But I really like where I'm at; I like what I do. I like how it makes people feel.

Every author has to eventually write a food book.

I'm a professional food eater.