Painting, it is true, was undergoing a series of -isms reminiscent of the whims of a pregnant woman.

— M.F.K. Fisher

Perhaps they should feel this safe sand blow away so that their heads are uncovered for a time, so that they will have to taste not only the solid honesty of my red borscht, but the new flavor of the changing world.

— M.F.K. Fisher

Perhaps this war will make it simpler for us to go back to some of the old ways we knew before we came over to this land and made the Big Money. Perhaps, even, we will remember how to make good bread again. It does not cost much. It is pleasant: one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. Furthermore, it leaves you filled with peace, and the house filled with one of the world's sweetest smells. But it takes a lot of time. If you can find that, the rest is easy. And if you cannot rightly find it, make it, for probably there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel, that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.

— M.F.K. Fisher

Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.

— M.F.K. Fisher

Put Rachel facing the door, in a faint subtle effort to make her know that if he had only had enough money and had managed to finish the thesis, he might well have asked her to be his hostess and share her life with him.

— M.F.K. Fisher

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.

— M.F.K. Fisher

She resolved, at forty-some, that since she herself must die, she would do it as gracefully as possible, as free as possible from vomiting, moans, the ignominy of basins, bedsores, and enemas, not to mention the intenser ignominious dependence of weak knees and various torments of the troubled mind.

— M.F.K. Fisher

There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the Twenties. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself When we exist without thought or Thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.

— M.F.K. Fisher

There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.

— M.F.K. Fisher

The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight...[Bread making is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. That will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.

— M.F.K. Fisher