Kathleen Flinn > Quotes

“I don't have to tell you I love you. I fed you pancakes.”
― Kathleen Flinn, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good: A Memoir of Food and Love from an American Midwest Family

“You can’t hurry love, and you can’t rush puff pastry, either. You can knead too much, and you can be too needy. Always, warmth is what brings pastry to rise. Chemistry creates something amazing; coupled with care and heat, it works some kind of magic to create this satisfying, welcoming, and nourishing thing that is the base of life.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“I'm a woman; in so many ways I've been programmed to please. I took the job and spent time hunkered over figures, budgets, charts, and fiscal-year projections. I tried, but I hated it.

"Working at a job you don't like is the same as going to prison every day," my father used to say. He was right. I felt imprisoned by an impressive title, travel, perks, and a good salary. On the inside, I was miserable and lonely, and I felt as if I was losing myself. I spent weekends working on reports no one read, and I gave presentations that I didn't care about. It made me feel like a sellout and, worse, a fraud.

Now set free, like any inmate I had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“The sharper your knife, the less you cry...for me, it also means cutting those things that get in the way of your passion and living your life the way it is meant to be lived.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“I didn't start cooking until I was thirty-two. Until then, I just ate. - Julia Child”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“Living is like driving," my grandmother used to say. "You have to pick a lane." Have I chosen the right lane? It feels like this place, this moment in time, lies exactly halfway between my past and my future.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“Vous perdez votre temps! (You're wasting your time.)”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“Don't forget, taste, taste, taste.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“Find something you believe in. Then, just do it. That's what matters.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks

“With that, I lost a job I was desperate to quit.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“If you believe that life should be full of adventure , then you have to willing to let your kids have them, too.”
― Kathleen Flinn, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good: A Memoir of Food and Love from an American Midwest Family

“An emperor walks with his court through many fields of roses until they come to a barren spot. There he sees one rose. "It's the most beautiful rose I've ever seen!" the emperor cries. Those walking with him point out that he'd just been through a field of similar roses. "Yes, but THIS one I can see.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“Working at a job you don't like is the same as going to prison every day," my father used to say.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“As in cooking, living requires that you taste, taste, taste as you go along.”
― Kathleen Flinn

“Chefs are magicians in white, accomplished at slight of hand.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“You're only limited by your passion and your imagination. Be open to the possibilities, take chances.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks

“Every grocery cart tells a story.”
― kathleen flinn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks

“My mother always says, 'Eighty percent of what you worry about never happens anyway.'...So much of life is a farce, in both meanings of the word. Much of our life is made up of situations one might find in a traditional comedy - misunderstandings, wrong expectations, and odd situations that, in retrospect, seem quite amusing. How much of what happens is just stuff? Of course, there is always that other 20 percent.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“Somehow i knew this chance encounter was going to change my life.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks

“Living is like driving,' my grandmother used to say. 'You have to pick a lane.' Had I chosen the right lane? It feels like this place, this moment in time, lies exactly halfway between my past and my future.

It's too late to change back. When I return to Paris on Monday, I must really start living there. So far, I've barely ventured outside of my apartment, except to go to school.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“Pastry is like people . . . You can't hurry love, and you can't rush puff pastry either. You can knead too much, and you can be too needy. Always, warmth is what brings pastry to rise. Chemistry creates something amazing; coupled with care and heat, it works some kind of magic to create a satisfying, welcoming, and nourishing thing that is the base of life.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“Wine has a powerful effect on the ability to speak a foreign language. In my current state, I’m certain I speak fluently.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“You don’t see a bowl of wet brains every day,” she says, and who can argue—until we use it for almost a week.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“This odd response triggered in the brain led researchers to find that rats fed a steady diet of junk food quickly become addicted to it. Waiting for their dopamine fix from high-sugar, fatty, and salty treats, they rejected their normal “rat chow.” Some of them starved to death.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School

“For most people, the only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.” —Julia Child”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School

“Strategists figure out how to use every single inch of a supermarket to get the most profit out of it, she said. Nothing is left to chance.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks

“After years of trying to find the "secret" to battling my weight issues, I seem to have found it in cooking, she said. I'm an emotional eater. Taking my food with me to work and eating the same things has helped me maintain that food is fuel and not luxury or reward.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks

“Few of us realize that we shoppers are mice in a complex retail maze. Supermarkets spend a vast amount of money to figure out how shoppers behave. Every detail is purposeful, from the music they play to the size of the font declaring sales. For instance, you probably notice that it's chilly in a supermarket. I used to think that was because the chill helped to preserve the food. In fact, cold triggers hunger. If you are hungry, you'll buy more. The first thing that you run into in a supermarket is the produce section. The tactile experience of touching food and the bright colors get you in the mood for shopping. The milk, flour and cereal are invariably spaced far apart. Why? Supermarkets are designed to slow you down. The longer you spend in the maze of a store trying to find staples, the more likely you'll buy something on impulse. Food manufacturers pay for premium shelf placement at eye level, or, in the cereal aisle, at the eye level of children.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks

“He wraps a bay leaf, thyme, and parsley with the dark green portion of a leek and secures it with a string. Voilà, a bouquet garni.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

“There's nothing wrong with eating the same things routinely. The goal is to feed yourself and the people around you with real food. Cook on the weekends and use leftovers during the week. If you'll eat leftovers, cook twice as much as you'll eat and put the rest aside for lunches.”
― Kathleen Flinn, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks