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
Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Under its influence, ordinary songs take on dimensions and powers, like emotional superheroes. – Kate Christensen
There are two kinds of ham: raw and cooked. Raw ham is cured with salt and/or smoke over time; cooked ham is boiled. Every culture that makes ham has its own unique and various methods. – Kate Christensen
My 50th birthday approaching felt like a big milestone to me. I’ve lived half a century. If I write about food and use my life as a fulcrum to move the story along, maybe I’ve lived long enough to fashion a narrative that has a happy ending. – 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
Littlenecks and cherrystones are chewy and sweet on the half shell with mignonette, served raw. But a well-cooked clam is a toothsome, tender thing, full of that magical stuff known as clam liquor. – 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
Reading a Lydia Davis story collection is like reaching into what you think is a bag of potato chips and pulling out something else entirely: a gherkin, a pepper corn, a truffle, a piece of beef jerky. – 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
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 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
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
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
I never liked dolls or played house. I read and wrote, climbed trees, collected rocks, rode my bike, and befriended boys, platonically. – 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 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
Country ham is baked whole, usually with a glaze, sometimes studded with cloves, and served as the centerpiece of Christmas and Easter feasts. – Kate Christensen
Whenever possible, I use local, fresh ingredients, just because it tastes and feels better to eat an egg or a tomato or a hamburger that wasn’t flown halfway around the world, that didn’t travel on a truck and get stuck in traffic jams, that hasn’t been sitting in a supermarket’s refrigerator case for days. – 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
After my experiences with the 5:2 diet, I wasn’t interested in a short-term fix that would fail later. I wanted a way of eating that made me lose weight without feeling deprived. – Kate Christensen
Iggy Pop has a voice that’s somehow simultaneously self-mocking, wild, precise, amused, righteous, cool, contained and bold. I don’t know how he does what he does. – Kate Christensen
My favorite way to cook a clam is in chowder. I was a New Yorker for 20 years, and I always loved tomato-based, celery-heavy Manhattan chowders. – 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
I think my blog is fairly circumspect and elliptical. I’ve written personal essays, but they are short and to the point: in and out, and that’s that. – 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
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
