William Alexander > Quotes

“I’m lecturing my class last week. In the English language, I tell them, a double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as Russian, a double negative remains a negative. But there isn’t a single language, not one, in which a double positive can express a negative. And I hear a voice from the back of the room: ‘Yeah, right.’ ”
― William Alexander, Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart

“Choose one thing you care about and resolve to do it well. Whether you succeed or not, you will be the better for the effort.”
― William Alexander

“The nice thing about baking alone in the kitchen before dawn is that you can talk to yourself like a crazy person and no one suspects you're a crazy person.”
― William Alexander, 52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust

“French, for me, is not just an accomplishment. It’s a need. —ALICE KAPLAN, French Lessons, 1994”
― William Alexander, Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart

“Thankfully, improbably, we are aboard, sighing, then giggling with relief, until our fun is spoiled by le conducteur. “Billets? ” he requests. In the mad dash to the train, we’ve had to neglect one slight detail: tickets.”
― William Alexander, Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart

“On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. (We see well only with the heart.) —ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY, Le petit prince, 1943”
― William Alexander, Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart

“Hawthorne ends the story this way: 'He failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.”
― William Alexander, 52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust

“Gardening is, by its very nature, an expression of the triumph of optimism over experience. No matter how bad this year was, there's always next year. Experience doesn't count.”
― William Alexander, The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

“Bread is life.”
― William Alexander, 52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust

“How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex? —Julia Child”
― William Alexander, 52 Loaves: A Half-Baked Adventure

“a Frenchman might say after sipping a smooth red wine: C’est le petit Jésus en culotte de velours! It’s the baby Jesus in velvet shorts! What!? Relax, it’s just the French way of saying “It’s the tops!” (a Roaring Twenties flapper might’ve said, “It’s the cat’s pajamas!”) or it goes down easy, like God in velvet shorts—or underpants, depending on who’s translating. You get the idea, although getting the idea doesn’t make it any less curious. My secret fantasy is to see an American presidential candidate slip up and use that expression on the stump: “Winning Connecticut would be the baby Jesus in velvet shorts!” Not only would his career be over, but I swear, I’d probably make a map of France, right then and there. French and the Middle-Aged Mind Middle age is that perplexing time of life when we hear two voices calling us, one saying, Why not?”
― William Alexander, Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart

“One event is an anomaly, two is a coincidence, and three a pattern.”
― William Alexander, The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

“Well, ah don’t weed; ah cultivate. (As it turns out, ah will cultivate a lot.) Whereas weeding evokes images of backbreaking labor, kneeling under a broad-brimmed hat while hand-yanking weeds into a basket to be dumped in a remote corner of the yard, cultivating suggests nurturing, caring for tender shoots, feeding, and raising. All of which you accomplish, of course, by kneeling and hand-yanking weeds into a basket to be dumped in a remote corner of the yard.”
― William Alexander, The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

“The great, terrifying existentialist question : If you were doomed to live the same life over and over again for eternity, would you choose the life you are living now? The question is interesting enough, but I've always thought the point of asking it is really the unspoken, potentially devastating follow-up question. That is, if the answer is no, then why are you living the life you are living now? Stop making excuses , and do something about it.”
― William Alexander, The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

“They say bread is life. And I bake bread, bread, bread. And I sweat and shovel this stinkin’ dough in and out of this hot hole in the wall, and I should be so happy! Huh, sweetie? —Nicolas Cage in Moonstruck”
― William Alexander, 52 Loaves: A Half-Baked Adventure

“Studying French has been like drinking from a mental fountain of youth!”
― William Alexander, Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart

“but I had set the precedent of declaring my preference for the solitary pleasures of gardening over social events.”
― William Alexander, The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

“Environmentalists blame the farmers for overdosing with pesticides, and the farmers blame the consumers for demanding blemish-free fruit.”
― William Alexander, The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden