I don't feel that I've had a life of abuse or that I am a victim in any way. My life is pretty typical of a lot of Americans of my generation who grew up in the sixties in families like mine that were sort of unconventional.

Kate Christensen

In literature, older women are not often given center stage.

Kate Christensen

Food is not a means toward resolution. It can't cure heartbreak or solve untenable dilemmas.

Kate Christensen

I have observed, through many years of living in north Brooklyn, that people, for example an ostensible group of friends, can be dangerous to one another.

Kate Christensen

Therapists have tremendous power over their vulnerable clients, and it is very easy to take advantage of this power.

Kate Christensen

'Blue Plate Special' is the autobiography of my first half-century of life, with food as the subject.

Kate Christensen

In 1990, when I had just arrived in New York City as a wet-behind-the-ears 20-something girl from Arizona, I spent a year or more working as the personal secretary and secret ghostwriter to an American-born countess in her apartment on the Upper East Side.

Kate Christensen

After a day of writing, I love nothing more than to go into my kitchen and start chopping onions and garlic on the way to cooking an improvised meal with whatever ingredients are on hand. Cooking is the perfect counterpoint to writing. I find it more relaxing than anything else, even naps, walks, or hot baths.

Kate Christensen

Living in New York City is one constant, ongoing literary pilgrimage. For 20 years, I lived among the ghosts of great writers and walked where they had walked.

Kate Christensen

At first blush, it seems odd that loser lit books are rejected initially, then go on to be fiercely loved by legions of readers. This apparent contradiction might be due to the fact that if they didn't screw up their lives, most losers would be the kind of power-elite, Type A go-getters whom readers love to hate.

Kate Christensen

On Halloween, kids get to assume, for one night the outward forms of their innermost dread, and they're also allowed to take candy from strangers - the scariest thing of all.

Kate Christensen

Now that I'm 50 and respectably settled in New England and markedly happier and more contented than I was in my youth, I modestly hope there's time to realize some of my youthful goals before I croak, but I'll take what I can get.

Kate Christensen

Even more than dying itself, I'm scared of the horror-movie changes that happen to the human body as it ages. I think of it as a sort of haunted-house effect, living inside a crumbling, creaking structure that is full of ghosts and will, some day, fall down.

Kate Christensen

I love the perspective afforded by having lived five decades, a degree of bemused and muted calm, a relief from the insistent demands of a turbulent ego and rampant ambition. I'd love to stay here forever. But something tells me that 50 is a sunny idyll, a temporary state of grace, a golden afternoon.

Kate Christensen

Eating by myself in my own apartment, single and alone again for the first time in many years, I should have felt, but did not feel, sad. Because I had taken the trouble to make myself a real dinner, I felt nurtured and cared for, if only by myself. Eating alone was freeing, too; I didn't have to make conversation.

Kate Christensen

I regretted the solitary nature of the writer's life - other people, normal working people, spent their days with co-workers, rode the subway home with a crowd, walked through thronged streets. I worked at home, all by myself.

Kate Christensen

The phrase 'blue plate special' has always been one of the homiest, coziest, most sweetly nostalgic phrases in the English language for me.

Kate Christensen

My father's grandparents came from Norway and settled in the Scandinavian bastion of Minnesota. As a little girl in Tempe, Arizona, I daydreamed about picking cloudberries by a fjord in a fresh Nordic wind.

Kate Christensen

Reminded of what a diet really is, I began eating more slowly, being more conscious of when I was full. I started to enjoy my buckwheat bread with goat cheese and pureed butternut-squash soup as a response to real hunger.

Kate Christensen

As my family saw them, men were untrustworthy, weak, and selfish. Our mother taught us to get along without them, to get along without much of anything, and to live well and have fun anyway.

Kate Christensen

Kate Christensen Quotes

I don't feel that I've had a life of abuse or that I am a victim in any way. My life is pretty typical of a lot of Americans of my generation who grew up in the sixties in families like mine that were sort of unconventional.

In literature, older women are not often given center stage.

Food is not a means toward resolution. It can't cure heartbreak or solve untenable dilemmas.

I have observed, through many years of living in north Brooklyn, that people, for example an ostensible group of friends, can be dangerous to one another.

Therapists have tremendous power over their vulnerable clients, and it is very easy to take advantage of this power.

'Blue Plate Special' is the autobiography of my first half-century of life, with food as the subject.

In 1990, when I had just arrived in New York City as a wet-behind-the-ears 20-something girl from Arizona, I spent a year or more working as the personal secretary and secret ghostwriter to an American-born countess in her apartment on the Upper East Side.

Living in New York City is one constant, ongoing literary pilgrimage. For 20 years, I lived among the ghosts of great writers and walked where they had walked.

On Halloween, kids get to assume, for one night the outward forms of their innermost dread, and they're also allowed to take candy from strangers - the scariest thing of all.

Now that I'm 50 and respectably settled in New England and markedly happier and more contented than I was in my youth, I modestly hope there's time to realize some of my youthful goals before I croak, but I'll take what I can get.

Even more than dying itself, I'm scared of the horror-movie changes that happen to the human body as it ages. I think of it as a sort of haunted-house effect, living inside a crumbling, creaking structure that is full of ghosts and will, some day, fall down.

I regretted the solitary nature of the writer's life - other people, normal working people, spent their days with co-workers, rode the subway home with a crowd, walked through thronged streets. I worked at home, all by myself.

The phrase 'blue plate special' has always been one of the homiest, coziest, most sweetly nostalgic phrases in the English language for me.

My father's grandparents came from Norway and settled in the Scandinavian bastion of Minnesota. As a little girl in Tempe, Arizona, I daydreamed about picking cloudberries by a fjord in a fresh Nordic wind.

Reminded of what a diet really is, I began eating more slowly, being more conscious of when I was full. I started to enjoy my buckwheat bread with goat cheese and pureed butternut-squash soup as a response to real hunger.

As my family saw them, men were untrustworthy, weak, and selfish. Our mother taught us to get along without them, to get along without much of anything, and to live well and have fun anyway.