Kate Christensen Quotes

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Kate Christensen

Profession : Novelist

Birth : August 22, 1962

My first novel, 'In the Drink,' begun when I was 29 and floundering and published when I was 36 and married, was about a 29-year-old woman whose life was even more screwed up than my own had been.

Kate Christensen

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.

Kate Christensen

I think there's a part of my brain where food, language, and memory all intersect, and it's really powerful. I think I'm not alone in this.

Kate Christensen

I realized that I've had a really rocky relationship with food - it has not been a gauzy, beautiful summer of ripe melons and perfectly buttered toast.

Kate Christensen

I wrote my first story when I was six or seven.

Kate Christensen

I started reading G. K. Chesterton's 'The Man Who Was Thursday' on a subway ride, almost missed my stop, and walked home thumbing pages.

Kate Christensen

I remember the moment I first became aware of aging. I was 30. I looked down at my knees, and the skin above them had become a little loose. And I thought, 'And so it begins!'

Kate Christensen

I've never been an outward rebel, but inside, I just rebel deeply.

Kate Christensen

It's hard for me to generalize about kids and divorce. I think every family's experience is different; some kids are devastated by it, others relieved, and so forth, no matter what generation they're from.

Kate Christensen

Often I choose characters who express not my best self, but the sides of me I haven't developed or haven't expressed.

Kate Christensen

Characters who don't suffer have no interest to me.

Kate Christensen

For writers and artists, it's always a balancing act between wanting to be the center of attention and wanting to be invisible and watch what's going on.

Kate Christensen

It makes you vulnerable to win an award. It's nice to get the attention, but your neck is stuck out.

Kate Christensen

I never see myself as writing satire. I think I write about people as they really are, without making them better or worse.

Kate Christensen

With my friends in Brooklyn, many of them started out as artists. I saw many of these friends move into late middle age, still struggling without health insurance or a cushion. I saw people who had given up being artists. Being an artist necessitates a compromise or living on the edge.

Kate Christensen

I'm not a foodie - I'm an eater: I'm hungry.

Kate Christensen

I've cooked plenty of meals when I was sad, lonely, depressed, angry, bored, and/or under the weather. My primary aim in these circumstances is generally to cheer myself up, to fill my stomach with something warm so I can feel comforted and fed, usually just with a quick soup or an omelet.

Kate Christensen

Most of all, I love unfussy, unpretentious, simple food made with excellent ingredients. If I'm a snob, it's about quality, not cuisine.

Kate Christensen

I wanted to write a food book, but I'm not a chef or an expert on culinary matters, to put it mildly.

Kate Christensen

My blog is a celebration of the unexpected, settled, happy life I find myself living in Portland, Maine, at the ripe old age of fifty with someone I deeply love and am very happy with. That's part of why I started the blog.

Kate Christensen