Quotes about lunch (174 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

For Friend

“Everything I ever projected New York to be, it was—even the stinky, ratty, vomity part of it. Everybody has to do the subway. Everybody has to smell the same smells. And people get mad all the time. When people don’t like something, like ‘Get out of my way you blah, blah, blah.’ But [in L. A. ] it’s like, ‘How ya doing? Let’s do lunch! I love you!”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

KCRW – Man In The Moon (January 4, 1994)
From Interviews

Love , People , Way , Time

“I'd like to find whoever taught the Stump that extra work builds character and push him down the stairs," Neal told Kel at lunch.”

Tamora Pierce book First Test

Source: First Test

“I want to talk to her. I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I just can’t believe I’m here without her.”- on losing her best friend”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Source: I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Love , Books , Reading

“Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Country

“A naked lunch is natural to us
We eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don't hide the madness.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Nature , Reality , Madness

“Here's a quick rule of thumb: Don't annoy science fiction writers. These are people who destroy entire planets before lunch. Think of what they'll do to you.”

John Scalzi (1969) American science fiction writer

People , Thinking , Science

“[having been recognized by a woman in a diner]
She sits down across the table from me, and didn't say "Hi, hello, my name is…." She just said "this is what I'm going to tell my husband when he gets home from work today. I'm going to tell him that I had lunch with Jeff Foxworthy."”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

[looks up] Really God? Really?
Aged and Confused (2009)

God , Home

“To one who asked what was the proper time for lunch, he said, "If a rich man, when you will; if a poor man, when you can."”

Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy

Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 40
Quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

Time

“There is no such thing as free lunch, and even if there were, there’d be no guarantee against indigestion.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 5, “Statistics, Trade-Offs, and Society” (p. 147)

“In some ways, though, the securing of civil rights, voting rights, the eradication of legalized discrimination -- the very significance of these victories may have obscured a second goal of the March. For the men and women who gathered 50 years ago were not there in search of some abstract ideal. They were there seeking jobs as well as justice, not just the absence of oppression but the presence of economic opportunity. For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can’t afford the meal? This idea -- that one’s liberty is linked to one’s livelihood; that the pursuit of happiness requires the dignity of work, the skills to find work, decent pay, some measure of material security -- this idea was not new. Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms -- as a promise that in due time, “the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.””

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, "Let Freedom Ring" Ceremony (August 2013)

Women , Men , Justice , Way

“[After some time] I found that I understood a lot more about Parisians' attitude to work. Workdays became a mild irritant inserted between weekends. Friday afternoons were little more than a short period after lunch during which you checked the internet for traffic jams on the routes out of town.”

Stephen Clarke book A Year in the Merde

On Parisians' attitude to work
A Year in the Merde (2005)

Time

“My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Letter to Margaret Anderson (1941)

Waiting

“I love food! I wake up in the morning and one of the first things on my mind is food, what are we going to eat for lunch? … In Italy… I like the sense of family that you have, the long summertime lunches with uncles who give you advice, the limoncello at the end of meals… Family means to help each other through difficult times, give each other a hand, as in a community. … I admire vegans… I like to eat fish once in while, but I don’t eat meat anymore because animal farms are one of the main causes of the destruction of the planet.”

Willem Dafoe (1955) American actor

"Food Talks: Willem Dafoe, His Italian Family, Broccoli, Carciofi & Panzanella" http://www.foodiamo.com/italian-food-news/food-talks-willem-dafoe/, interview with Foodiamo (January 2018).

Love , Family , Food , Communication

“Some contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch …”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1940)

“I grabbed her, right there outside the lunch room in the swarming mob. I didn't care if others were watching. In fact, i hoped they were. I grabbed her and squeezed her. I had never been so happy and so proud in my life.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

Life , Hope , Happiness

“Cinna just smiles. 'Had a damp morning?'
'You could wring me out,' I reply.
Cinna puts his arm around my shoulder and leads me into lunch. ' Don't worry, I always channel my emotions into my work. That way I don't hurt anyone but myself.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Smile , Way , Hurt

“Because that's what you do, you stand up for your best friend. And you eat lunch with him and talk with him and share secrets and laugh a lot and go places and do stuff, and when you wake up in the morning, he's the first person you think of.”

Jerry Spinelli book Loser

Source: Loser

Secret , Thinking , Personality

“Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean that you want to have lunch with the person. If you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare…”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Forgiveness , Personality

“Why wouldn't I dance?' Uh, maybe because at first glance he looked like he ate puppies for breakfast and kittens for lunch?”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

Dance

“Want to come back to the morgue with me after lunch? (Tate)
I shudder at the thought of the pickup line you must have used the night you met LaShonda. Come with me, baby, and see my collection of stiffs. (Simone)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Chaser

Baby , Night

“Nobody got murdered before lunch. But nobody. People weren't up to it. You needed a good lunch to get both the blood-sugar and blood-lust levels up.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

People

“Anything else?"

Haymitch rises to go. "While I was waiting… I ate your lunch.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Variant: While I was waiting... I ate your lunch.
Source: Mockingjay

Waiting

“When they ran up to him, Percy said, 'Hey,' like they were just meeting for lunch or something.

'You're alive!' Frank marveled.

Percy frowned. 'The fall? That was nothing. I fell twice that far from the St. Louis Arch.'

'You didHazel asked.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Cheating , Box

“That's why we're going to disrupt the lunch," she (Kat) said.

"You know," Angus said, "I've got a little C-four that I've been saving for a rainy--"

"We're not blowing up my company, Angus," Hale said.

"Righto. Carry on, Kitty.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Perfect Scoundrels

“I blend in the backgroud. when I arive for lunch my friends are surprised i'm not already there.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: Finally

“Despise The Free Lunch”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

“Sometimes the only answer to death is lunch.”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

Source: Warlock

Death

“Mom?" Mother turned to Grandmother.
"What?"
"She's going to lunch with her kidnapper!"
"Take a picture for me," Grandma said.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Moms , Grandma

“I past another telkhine, who was so startled he dropped his Lil' Demons lunch box. I left him alive - partly because he had a cool lunch box…”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Past , Box

“I'll never forget my first time with you' Min said as she edged the doughnut off her finger. 'The earth moved, and then my mother asked my father who he was going down on at lunch.”

Jennifer Crusie book Bet Me

Source: Bet Me

Time , Forgetting

“Okay," Claire finally said. "I admit, he has significant ninja qualities."
"Booyah. I will summon the ninja. Oh, and take a lunch break while we burgle."
"You’re going too?"
"Am I not ninja enough? Are you saying that I lack ninja?”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bite Club

“I've forgotten who I had lunch with earlier, and even more important, where.”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

“IT was the time of day when Lake Eden residents decided it was too late for a breakfast cookie and too early for a lunch cookie.”

Joanne Fluke book Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder

Source: Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder

Time

“That seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

Love , Girl

“He would work through the night and sleep until lunch. There wasn't really much else to do. Make something, and die.”

Ian McEwan book Amsterdam

Source: Amsterdam

Sleep , Night

“Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Personality

“Anyone who calls it "sexual intercourse" can't possibly be interested in actually doing it. You might as well announce you're ready for lunch by proclaiming, "I'd like to do some masticating and enzyme secreting.”

Allan Sherman (1924–1973) American comedian

Secret

“A computer chatted to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open and close itself for no apparent reason.
This was because Reason was in fact out to lunch.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Knowledge is a thing that one cannot have enough of. It is the fruit of wisdom, to be eaten carefully and digested fully, unlike that lunch you are bolting down, little friend.”

Brian Jacques Redwall

Source: Redwall

Wisdom , Knowledge

“Lying down to sleep on the earthen riverbank, I thought, Vrindavan is attracting my heart like no other place. What is happening to me? Please reveal Your divine will. With this prayer, I drifted off to sleep.
Before dawn, I awoke to the ringing of temple bells, signaling that it was time to begin my journey to Hardwar. But my body lay there like a corpse. Gasping in pain, I couldn’t move. A blazing fever consumed me from within, and under the spell of unbearable nausea, my stomach churned. Like a hostage, I lay on that riverbank. As the sun rose, celebrating a new day, I felt my life force sinking. Death that morning would have been a welcome relief. Hours passed.
At noon, I still lay there. This fever will surely kill me, I thought.
Just when I felt it couldn’t get any worse, I saw in the overcast sky something that chilled my heart. Vultures circled above, their keen sights focused on me. It seemed the fever was cooking me for their lunch, and they were just waiting until I was well done. They hovered lower and lower. One swooped to the ground, a huge black and white bird with a long, curving neck and sloping beak. It stared, sizing up my condition, then jabbed its pointed beak into my ribcage. My body recoiled, my mind screamed, and my eyes stared back at my assailant, seeking pity. The vulture flapped its gigantic wings and rejoined its fellow predators circling above. On the damp soil, I gazed up at the birds as they soared in impatient circles. Suddenly, my vision blurred and I momentarily blacked out. When I came to, I felt I was burning alive from inside out. Perspiring, trembling, and gagging, I gave up all hope.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching. A local farmer herding his cows noticed me and took pity. Pressing the back of his hand to my forehead, he looked skyward toward the vultures and, understanding my predicament, lifted me onto a bullock cart. As we jostled along the muddy paths, the vultures followed overhead. The farmer entrusted me to a charitable hospital where the attendants placed me in the free ward. Eight beds lined each side of the room. The impoverished and sadhu patients alike occupied all sixteen beds. For hours, I lay unattended in a bed near the entrance. Finally that evening the doctor came and, after performing a series of tests, concluded that I was suffering from severe typhoid fever and dehydration. In a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “You will likely die, but we will try to save your life.””

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

Republished on The Journey Home website.
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life , Death , Pain , Hope

“Why can't this priest go back to Los Angeles and leave me alone? Why is he taking me to lunch when he should be out there visiting the sick and the dying? That's what priests are for.”

Frank McCourt book 'Tis

§10
'Tis (2000)

Angels

“The Middle Ages hangs over history's belt like a beer belly. It is too late now for aerobic dancing or cottage cheese lunches to reduce the Middle Ages. History will have to wear size 48 shorts forever.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Age , History , Beer , Dance

“Babe] also inspired me to become vegan. After having worked all morning with these extraordinary animals, I'd see their relatives on the lunch table. They had ham and duck, every animal except horse. That's when I said, "I've got to try to be a vegan." And for the most part, I have been vegan since 1994. [You were vegetarian before Babe. What inspired that change? ] I rode across the country on a motorcycle in 1975. I remember it was the worst time of year and bloody cold. When I was going through Texas, I went through the feedlots, which I had never seen before. It was a very sobering sight—heartbreaking and awful. It's a corporate system completely out of touch with what is sustainable, what is humane, what is compassionate. At the time, I didn't even know what a vegetarian was. I just thought, "I can't eat [animals] anymore."”

James Cromwell (1940) American actor and producer

"The Tale of an Unprejudiced Heart: An Interview with James Cromwell" http://www.humanesociety.org/news/magazines/2015/01-02/unprejudiced-heart-interview-with-babe-actor-james-cromwell.html by The Humane Society of the United States (17 December 2014)

Change , Time , Animals , Horse

“When the economy is in a depression, scarcity ceases to rule. Productive resources sit idle, so that it is possible to have more of some things without having less of others; free lunches are all around. As a result, all the usual rules of economics are stood on their head; we enter a looking-glass world in which virtue is vice and prudence is folly. Thrift hurts our future prospects; sound money makes us poorer. Moreover, that's the kind of world we have been living in for the past several years, which means that it is a kind of world that students should understand. […] Depression economics is marked by paradoxes, in which seemingly virtuous actions have perverse, harmful effects. Two paradoxes in particular stand out: the paradox of thrift, in which the attempt to save more actually leads to the nation as a whole saving less, and the less-well-known paradox of flexibility, in which the willingness of workers to protect their jobs by accepting lower wages actually reduces total employment. […] In times of depression, the rules are different. Conventionally sound policy – balanced budgets, a firm commitment to price stability – helps to keep the economy depressed. Once again, this is not normal. Most of the time we are not in a depression. But sometimes we are – and 2013, when this chapter was written, was one of those times.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

“Depressions are Different”, in Robert M. Solow, ed. Economics for the Curious: Inside the Minds of 12 Nobel Laureates. 2014.

Money , World , Understanding , Time

“Fellini was a man of many selves and contradictions: he quoted Dante with genuine emotion while executing pornographic doodles on the table napkin then balked at paying the lunch bill while handing out millions of lire to the beggars of Rome. Although he boasted he was heterosexual, he nonetheless directed one of the greatest bisexual films of all time. He was Mr. Cool as well as the Nutty Professor. He contains multitudes and the journey to his center never ceases. Quite simply, you end up cherishing an Onion Man with no center. Federico really had a rough time of it but pretended otherwise and had the grace never to expose his personal problems in public. And then there are the films that continuously generate new meanings. For example, 8 1/2 contains alembicated allusions to Hamlet of tremendous power and beauty that resonate in the mind long after the film is over.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On Fellini's personality, in Indiewire (April, 2003)

Beauty , Quotes , Problem , Time

“We all love animals, but why do we call some ‘pets’ and others ‘dinner’? If you knew how meat was made, you'd probably lose your lunch. I know. I'm from cattle country. That's why I became a vegetarian.”

K.d. lang (1961) Canadian singer-songwriter

In a 1990 ad for PETA, standing beside a cow; as quoted in Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985-1995 by Michael Barclay, Ian A.D. Jack, Jason Schneider (Toronto: ECW Press, 2011 ebook edition), p. 419 https://books.google.it/books?id=UkvPAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT419.

Love , Animals , Country

“Talked at lunch with a gentleman just returned from Japan, who told me some disturbing things about the influences behind our policies of extreme democratization and de-concentration of economic life in Japan.
Of all the failures of United States policy in the wake of World War II, history will rate as the most grievous our failure to approach realistically the responsibilities of power over the defeated nations which we ourselves courted by the policy of unconditional surrender.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

January 30, 1948
The Kennan Diaries

Life , War , World , History

“The next day he [uncle Alfred] took me to hear the 'Concert Colonne' at the Chatelet. First we lunched and then went to the hall. There was a fine program! Schumann, Bizet (new to me), Berlioz (ditto). - I can scarcely express how I marveled at the Hamlet and Romeo et Juliette of Berlioz. - He belongs with Delacroix, with Shakespeare, he is of the same family, he has the mark of these men of genius. He is prodigious in movement, imagination, strangeness, vigor, delicacy, sense of contrast, he is terrible and suave.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, Paris, 2 April 1883, in a letter to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 26
1880's

Men , Family , Imagination , Sense

“I was about five and a half or six when I converted [to vegetarianism] … I was brought up the first five years of my life in London, in the working-class part of the city, where the only animals that a child is liable to see are domestic animals, or cats, or pigeons, or horses, none of which one eats. Then I was evacuated onto a farm when the war came, and billeted with this family of farmers, and I got very friendly with a rabbit—George, the rabbit. Then one day, George the rabbit was George the lunch. For a farming family there was nothing obscene about that. They kill animals; they serve them up at table and say, "Hey, yes, that's the animal you were playing with yesterday!"—which is not abnormal. It was obscene to me as a child.”

Marty Feldman (1934–1982) British actor and comedian

Interview in The Vegetarians by Rynn Berry (Brookline, MA: Autumn Press, 1979), p. 30.

Life , War , Family , Cats

“Sabotage became more frequent. On December 18, I went on a furlough and was supposed to return on January 5. When I arrived home I got a wire to be back in Copenhagen on December 29. It came from Pancke through his deputy. I later learned the reason through the deputy. Best, Pancke, Hannekan, and Kaltenbrunner were all called to Hitler's headquarters on December 30 for lunch. I went to Berlin, reported to Mueller on December 28 and 29, and told him that because I didn't execute countersabotage orders these people were to be scolded by Hitler. Mueller said: 'Comrade Mildner, watch yourself. Himmler is angry with you.”

Rudolf Mildner (1902) Chief of the Gestapo at Katowice

To Leon Goldensohn (12 February 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

People , Home , Learning

“Most Christians desire nonviolence, yes; but they are not talking about a nonviolent struggle for justice. They mean simply the absence of conflict. … The church says to the lion and the lamb, "Here, let me negotiate a truce," to which the lion replies, "Fine, after I finish my lunch."”

Walter Wink (1935–2012) American biblical scholar

Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way (2003), p. 4

Justice

“It was Italian playwright and screenwriter Ennio Flaiano who first spoke to Fellini of Fernando Pessoa during their collaboration on I Vitelloni (1953). Fellini claimed, however, that it was not until he lunched with Anthony Burgess in the mid 1970s (when the British writer owned a country house in Bracciano north of Rome) that he began reading the Portuguese poet in earnest. This is not to suggest that Pessoa influenced Fellini in any direct way but simply to note a genial coincidence embedded within two autobiographical masterpieces. The first quotation is from Pessoa’s O Livro do desassossego: ‘These are my Confessions, and if in them I say nothing, it’s because I have nothing to say.’ The second is from Fellini’s Otto e mezzo (1963) during the crucial night scene at the base of the scaffolding when Guido confesses to Rosella, “I have really nothing to say in my film. But I want to say it anyway.” Suddenly, the disparate obsessions of these two great Mediterranean minds seem to fold into one another, if only for an instant, like the sounds of vibrating wires touched simultaneously. Whatever the ultimate significance may be, it amuses me to think that textual coincidences of this nature are proof of the brotherhood of artists.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On Fellini and Fernando Pessoa
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Way , Nature , Thinking , Reading

“For years I used to bore my wife over lunch with stories about funny incidents. The words 'My book,' as in 'I'll put that in it one day,' became a sort of running joke. Eventually she said, 'Look, I don't want to offend you, but you've been saying that for 25 years. If you were going to write a book, you'd have done it. You're never going to do it now. Old vets of 50 don't write books.' So I purchased a lot of paper right then and started to write.”

James Herriot (1916–1995) veterinary surgeon and writer

Source: Margolis, Jonathan (Dec. 12, 2002). "But It Did Happen To A Vet". Time Magazine

Books

“The history of the twelve-week return to the so-called original conditions of work is soon told. The daily and weekly output rose to a point higher than at any other time and in the whole period "there was no downward trend." At the end of twelve weeks, in period thirteen, the group returned, as had been arranged, to the conditions of period seven with the sole difference that whereas the Company continued to supply coffee or other beverage for the mid-morning lunch, the girls now provided their own food. This arrangement lasted for thirty-one weeks—much longer than any previous change. Whereas in period twelve the group's output had exceeded that of all the other performances, in period thirteen, with rest-pauses and refreshment restored, their output rose once again to even greater heights”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilisation, (1933), p. 65, chapter 3: The Hawthorne experiment Western Electric Company

Food , History , Girl , Coffee

“(When asked about pop music) Pop music has become the largest farce in music history. It is soul-less, mechanical, and only made for the sole purpose of making the fastest dollar possible, with more emphasis on imagery than the music. I would much rather remain an independent recording artist who can dictate his own creativity and make it available to a smaller community of fans then sign with a major label under conditions of compromising my work just to sell lunch boxes and sound like every other thing out there. The only artists that have any longevity are the ones that pioneer a movement not follow a movement. The hundreds of following wannabes always get left in the dust or remain one-hit-wonders.”

Frank Klepacki (1974) American musician, video game music composer and sound director

Gameplay magazine

Music , Soul , History , Communication

“The pleasure of being with you is in the clash of personality, the intellectual battle, the war of ideas. To survive you one must have a strong brain, an assertive ego, a dynamic character. In your luncheon-parties, in old days, the remains of the guests were taken away with the débris of the feast. I have often lunched with you in Park Lane and found myself the only survivor.”

Frank Harris (1856–1931) Irish journalist and rogue

Oscar Wilde, letter to Frank Harris, June 13, 1897, in The Letters of Oscar Wilde (1962) p. 608.
Criticism

War , Pleasure , Idea , Strong

“While I didn't know it at the time, Daniel had suggested to Michael that I play Cora before we had ever met. And prior to our meeting, I was at a restaurant with John Bailey, the director, when I felt this man looking over in our direction and smiling a good deal. I realized, after leaving, that it was Daniel. He later told me that he was having lunch with Michael and had coincidentally asked him earlier that very day about me. It's just a funny thing, isn't it? And I was terribly flattered when he told me this tale. He was also very clear that the decision to cast me as Cora was all Michael's.”

Madeleine Stowe (1958) American actress

Mohican Press interview (2005)

Smile , Decision , Time

“So, what else is going on? Music? Fine, here is The Beatles, The Stones come here later this evening, there is The Velvet Underground, Janis Joplin has just gone to lunch. So, do you want something to do in between now and then, I'd grow my hair and fornicate if I were you.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Monster (2004)

Music

“I was wrong. I shouldn't have allowed my emotions to get the better of me and lose my cool. I have apologized to Michael Scotto, which he graciously accepted, and will be scheduling a lunch soon. In the weeks and months ahead I'll be working hard for my constituents on issues like flood insurance that is so desperately needed in my district post-Sandy.”

Michael Grimm (1970) American politician

Apology to Michael Scotto (29 January 2014) http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/michael-grimm-michael-scotto-reporter-102785.html.
2010s

“My mantra is “stay perpendicular.” Horizontal is not as good. Half the people that came along and up with with me are either gone to another dimension or don’t remember what they had for lunch. I’m fortunate. I don’t know why. I just want to have a good time.”

Martin Landau (1928–2017) American actor and acting coach

Martin Landau: ‘Doubt Is Important’, Washington Times (December 25, 2016)

People , Time

“(Las Vegas) composes a night-time image of Babylon in the desert. But it is Everyman's cut-rate Babylon. Not far away there is, or was, a roadside lunch counter and over it a sign proclaiming in three words that a Roman emperor's orgy is now a democratic institution. It says: 'Topless Pizza Lunch.”

Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) British journalist and broadcaster

Source: Alistair Cooke's America (1973), p. 280

Time , Night

“Someone's killed 100,000 people. We're almost going, "Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning! I can't even get down the gym. Your diary must look odd: 'Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death – lunch – death, death, death – afternoon tea – death, death, death – quick shower …' "”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Dress to Kill (1998)

Death , People , Tea

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Widely attributed to Franklin on the Internet, sometimes without the second sentence. It is not found in any of his known writings, and the word "lunch" is not known to have appeared anywhere in English literature until the 1820s, decades after his death. The phrasing itself has a very modern tone and the second sentence especially might not even be as old as the internet. Some of these observations are made in response to a query at Google Answers. http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=389308
The earliest known similar statements are:
A democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Gary Strand, Usenet group sci.environment, 23 April 1990. http://groups.google.com/group/sci.environment/msg/057b1c6389f4776f?dmode=source
Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote.
Marvin Simkin, "Individual Rights", Los Angeles Times, 12 January 1992. http://articles.latimes.com/1992-01-12/local/me-358_1_jail-tax-individual-rights-san-diego
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
James Bovard, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), ISBN 0312123337, p. 333.
Also cited as by Bovard in the Sacramento Bee (1994) http://www.giraffe.com/gr_wolves.html
Misattributed
Variant: Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

Democracy

“You are about to have your first experience with a Greek lunch. I will kill you if you pretend to like it.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

Welcoming decorator Billy Baldwin to the island of Skorpios; quoted in Ari (1986) by Peter Evans

“Here I want to reiterate very clearly that this Little Mandate did not come to me dictated, or as a whole, but as I am telling it now. Get the picture: it could happen any place, any time, in the midst of a group, in my office, at lunch in a cafeteria. Suddenly a little light, a little added word would come to me. I used to write them down on scraps of paper, on the back of old envelopes, in some diary, maybe lost or forgotten now; though some of them are still here. It was a patchy thing.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

"How the Little Mandate Came to Be", p. 23
Unfinished Pilgrimage (1995)

Light , Time

“I DON’T KNOW IF YOU HAVE EVER LUNCHED WITH A VEGETARIAN. Probably you have. If you live in San Francisco you have. Then you’ve seen Dominic, his hand raised, fingers slightly crook’d to summon a waitress: Ma’am? (Pointing to the menu.) Is this dish made with meat stock? The waitress (a Chinese restaurant) takes a moment to divine the desired answer. No. (When in doubt.) So imperial, so sliding scale, so uncomprehending is her no, so wise is her no, finally, so Greek, so Arab, so Catholic, so Brown is her no, Dominic cannot be reassured. Dominic’s vegetarianism has to do with upholding the sacredness of life. He needs a puritan answer. Whereas Peter. Peter is the son of my friend Franz. Peter is as easy in the brown world of maybe as he is in his own white skin. He is wandering through India as I write this. Peter is handsome, gentle, Hindu-intoxicated, slightly blue; his skin is slightly blue. Peter’s veganism has to do with the sacredness of his own body; with the purity of his lungs and his bowels and his liver and his breath. Peter’s vigilance is maniacal: Do you place meat and vegetables on the same grill?”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Life , World

“The recent developments in cosmology strongly suggest that the universe may be the ultimate free lunch.”

Alan Guth (1947) American theoretical physicist and cosmologist

Alan Guth and Paul Steinhardt, The inflationary universe, edited by [Paul Davies, The New Physics, Cambridge University Press, 1992, 0-521-43831-4, 54]

Universe

“We lunched in Fregene: grilled sardines sprinkled with parsley and lemon. Federico ate daintily, like someone with no appetite. The beach was deserted, the wind brisk. In the distance stood the abandoned lighthouse he filmed for 8 1/2. Like someone about to propose a toast, he stood up and "recited" from King Lear :
Hark! Have you heard the news? The king fell off a cliff.
O horrible! Were you very close to him?
Indeed, sir. Close enough to push.
We laughed until he brusquely sat down again, scraping the fish scales off his fingers, staring at the age spots that covered his hands. The beautiful adolescent waitress asked for his autograph. He drew himself as a man-lion in a hat and scarf with huge paws chasing her, and signed it "Féfé." We spent the afternoon visiting Ostia and returned to Rome in a sweltering twilight. He asked to be driven home for a change of clothes. We invited Giulietta, who wore a green velvet turban, to join us for dinner. (Had she already lost her hair from chemotherapy?) Graciously, she declined while smoking cigarette after cigarette. At Cesarina's, Federico drew hilarious, pornographic sketches on the table napkin saying, "If you have not made love today then you have lost a day!"”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

The entire restaurant was at his feet. He was twenty years old now and as thin as Kafka. He was Rome. He had adopted us the way Rome adopts everyone, and we loved him.
On Fellini's final years
Federico Fellini: Sou um Grande Mentiroso (2008)

Love , Age , Beauty , Way

“Actually, when you have been in the country for a long time… whether it’s an Indian kid going to live in California working in a software company or whether its me coming to live here as historian and writer; to a certain extent you become a part of the country, and to a certain extent you remain always the person you were with the set of circumstances, history or personal history. So, I don’t think I can ever totally become Indian, but after twenty years I have certainly taken many of the Indian elements. In fact I am sitting talking to you right now in my cotton pajamas and at lunch time I will probably have dal and rice. In various ways I have taken on the life of Delhi; I think I am in the lucky position, in that I can talk to both worlds.”

William Dalrymple (1965) author and historian

In Amrita Ghosh, "Author in Focus: An Interview with Dalrymple".

Life , World , Way , History

“A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't allow it to spoil your lunch.”

Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) English novelist, poet, critic, teacher

Attributed in Aren't We Due a Royalty Statement? (1993) by Giles Gordon, and The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999) by Elizabeth M. Knowles, p. 14

“The hours of the morning between breakfast and lunch were the time which the inhabitants of Riseholme chiefly devoted to spying on each other”

E. F. Benson book Queen Lucia

Source: Queen Lucia (1920), p. 43.

Time

“Oh, my friends, be warned by me,
That Breakfast, Dinner, Lunch, and Tea
Are all the Human Frame requires.”

Hilaire Belloc book Cautionary Tales for Children

"Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String, and Was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies"
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)

Tea

“[remembering the day he got his draft notice] It was a summer afternoon, maybe June of '68. And I remember taking that envelope into the house and putting it on the kitchen table where my mom and dad were having lunch. They just looked at it and knew what it was. The silence of that lunch. I didn't speak, my mom didn't speak, my dad didn't speak. It was just that piece of paper lying at the center of the table. It was enough to make me cry to this day, not for myself, but for my mom and dad, both of whom had been in the Navy during World War Two, and had believed in service to one's country and all those values. (from the companion book, p. 318)”

Tim O'Brien (1946) American novelist

From The Vietnam War (2017)

War , Books , World , Lying

“What did you do today?
—Went to the grocery store and Xeroxed a box of English muffins, two pounds of ground veal and an apple. In flagrant violation of the Copyright Act.
—You had your nap, I remember that—
—I had my nap.
—Lunch, I remember that, there was lunch, slept with Susie after lunch, then your nap, woke up, right?, went Xeroxing, right?, read a book not a whole book but part of a book—
—Talked to Happy on the telephone saw the seven o’clock news did not wash dishes want to clean up some of this mess?
—If one does nothing but listen to the new music, everything else drifts, frays. Did Odysseus feel this way when he and Diomedes decided to steal Athene’s statue from the Trojans, so that they would become dejected and lose the war? I don’t think so, but who is to know what effect the new music of that remote time had on its hearers?
—Or how it compares to the new music of this time?
—One can only conjecture.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The New Music”, opening
Great Days (1979)

War , Books , Music , Way

“If you were sitting where I’m sitting and you heard what I have heard at every dinner conversation, every lunch conversation, on every lone walk, you would say this woman has never been satisfied with the status quo in anything. She always wants to move the ball forward. That is just who she is.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

“She lunched on papaya poo poo or mango mu mu or some other fruity foo foo bursting with overripe tropical vowels.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

“I remember we adjourned for lunch and a friendly Afrikaner warder asked me the question, "Mandela, what do you think is going to happen to you in this case?" I said to him, "Agh, they are going to hang us." Now, I was really expecting some word of encouragement from him. And I thought he was going to say, "Agh man, that can never happen." But he became serious and then he said, "I think you are right, they are going to hang you."”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Interview segment http://www.radiodiaries.org/mandela/t_movement.html on All Things Considered (NPR) broadcast (27 April 2004)
2000s

Question , Thinking

“I drive from home to my office, a small apartment on the river in the center of Dublin. I write there from 9 a. m. to lunchtime, I take a simple lunch—bread, cheese, nice cup of tea—work until 6 p. m., then home for dinner. Viewed from outside my head it is a singularly dull and uneventful day, but inside my head … aaah.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

How I Write: John Banville on ‘Ancient Light,’ Nabokov, and Dublin (2012)

Home , Tea

“On an ordinary day the corridor would have been filled with the early lunch crowd, but now the emptiness gave the place an eerie feeling, as though I were a trespasser and hidden eyes were watching me. Except that I was the only one there and the single sign of life was the light behind my office door.
I turned the knob, pushed it open and just stood there a second because something was wrong, sure as hell wrong, and the total silence was as loud as a wild scream. I had the.45 in my hand, crouched and edged to one side, listening, waiting, watching.”

Mickey Spillane book The Killing Man

The Killing Man (1989)

Life , Feeling , Hell , Light

“Although it is obvious that the Keynesians were all wrong and interventionism and central economic planning don’t work, whom are we listening to for advice on getting us out of this mess? Unfortunately, it’s the Keynesians, the socialists, and big-government proponents. Who’s being ignored? The Austrian free-market economists — the very ones who predicted not only the Great Depression, but the calamity we’re dealing with today. If the crisis was predictable and is explainable, why did no one listen? It’s because too many politicians believed that a free lunch was possible and a new economic paradigm had arrived. But we’ve heard that one before — like the philosopher’s stone that could turn lead into gold. Prosperity without work is a dream of the ages.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The Austrians Were Right, November 20, 2008 http://www.house.gov/apps/list/speech/tx14_paul/statement_11_20_08.shtml http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PIEGK0IbA4
2000s, 2006-2009

Age , Dreams

“People do what they do by choice, so I don’t really know it’s a matter of people being comfortable in front of the camera. I think it’s a matter of doing the work that’s available to you and then striving in it. If you realized how hard it is to get a job in the entertainment industry, and you were working prolifically in voice over and you can work doing on camera stuff here and there, it has nothing to do with being worried about how you look on camera. It’s about the work and you do the work that is available to you. These actors are that good that they’re able to do the voiceover stuff. It’s hard. A lot of people think that it’s easy to just go and talk in front of a microphone and that’s not the case. You’re not just talking, you’re acting. You’re acting in front of a microphone as opposed to a camera. It’s a lot more specific of a technique than most people think. It’s not, “Oh, do a silly voice!” Try doing a silly voice for four hours, then take a lunch break, and then do another silly voice for four hours. It’s not easy, especially because it’s about the acting. So I think that mindset is a little off.”

John DiMaggio (1968) American voice actor and comedian

Exclusive Interview: John DiMaggio & Lawrence Shapiro https://diaboliquemagazine.com/exclusive-interview-john-dimaggio-lawrence-shapiro/ (September 6, 2013)

People , Thinking

“You used to get people writing in to the Liverpool Echo saying, ‘Who is this Martian walking round town?’ I used to get battered. Going out for lunch was like running the gauntlet.”

Holly Johnson (1960) British artist

Frankie says... http://www.zttaat.com/article.php?title=751 at zttaat.com, Accessed May 2014.

People

“The amazing part of the great Danish cartoon caper isn't that Muslims immediately engage in acts of mob violence when things don't go their way. That is de rigueur for the Religion of Peace. Their immediate response to all bad news is mass violence. That's a "dog bites man" story and belongs on page B-34, next to the grade school hot lunch menu and the birth notices. After an Egyptian ferry capsized recently, killing hundreds of passengers, a whole braying mob of passengers' relatives staged an organized attack on the company, throwing furniture out the window and burning the building to the ground. Witnesses say it was the most violent ocean liner-related incident since Carnival Cruise Lines fired Kathie Lee Gifford. The "offense to Islam" ruse is merely an excuse for Muslims to revert to their default mode: rioting and setting things on fire.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Muslim Bites Dog" (15 February 2006) http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/printer_friendly.cgi?article=100.
2006

School , Peace , Religion , Dogs

“Everyone is helping each other out. That's what we do.... You know what happens? Infrastructure might not come through -- but people do come through. We all try to do our best. I know we just got power back in one of our restuarants, and I know there are a lot of people without power. So, we invited a thousand people with children to come over and have a hot lunch on us.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comment in aftermath of Hurricane Wilma (CNN's Showbiz Tonight-October 27, 2005)
2007, 2008

Children , People , Help

“Gilt-tooled on yard-square panels of green leather—imitation, of course—the zodiacal signs looked down from the walls of the executive lunch-room. The air was full of the chatter of voices and the clink of ice-cubes. Waiting to be attacked when the president of the company joined them (he had promised to show at one sharp) was a table laden with expensive food: hard-boiled eggs, shells intact so that it could be seen they were brown, free-range, rich in carotene; lettuces whose outer leaves had been rasped by slugs; apples and pears wearing their maggot-marks like dueling scars, in this case presumably genuine ones though it had been known for fruit growers to fake them with red-hot wires in areas where insects were no longer found; whole hams, very lean, proud of their immunity from antibiotics and copper sulphate; scrawny chickens; bread as coarse as sandstone, dark as mud and nubbled with wheat grains...”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

December “HOUSE TO HOUSE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Food , Waiting

“The recruit was Sam McCain; in one of our lunch sessions I recalled Sarah O’Connell describing him as more mouth than brain. Unsurprisingly, he’d been in sales most of his life.”

John Scalzi (1969) American science fiction writer

Source: Old Man’s War (2005), Chapter 8 (p. 136)

Life

“A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 am and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 pm to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished even before lunch.”

Fred Allen (1894–1956) comedian

Treadmill to Oblivion http://books.google.com/books?id=8IC6ZSGPAAYC&q="A+molehill+man+is+a+pseudo+busy+executive+who+comes+to+work+at+9+am+and+finds+a+molehill+on+his+desk+He+has+until+5+pm+to+make+this+molehill+into+a+mountain+An+accomplished+molehill+man+will+often+have+his+mountain+finished+even+before+lunch"&pg=PA27#v=onepage (1954).

Mountain , Business