As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto: Food, Friendship, and the Making of a Masterpiece

To think that we might easily have gone through life not knowing each other, missing all this free flow of love and ideas and warmth and sharing... We share really almost everything. (Avis DeVoto to Julia Child)

Well, all I know is this—nothing you ever learn is really wasted, and will sometime be used.

I'm getting stale. I always do this time of year. I keep my nose to the grindestone and put in long hours and rustle up good meals and do all the chores and run errands and get along with people -- and have a fine time doing it and enjoy life. Then I realize, bang, that I'm tired and I don't want to wait on my family for a while and I wish I could go away somewhere and have people wait on me hand and foot, and dress up and go to restaurants and the theater and act like a woman of the world. I feel as if I'd been swallowed up whole by all these powerful DeVotos and I'd like to be me for a while with somebody who never heard the name.

But how nice it is that one can come to know someone just through correspondence, and become really passionate friends.

You have come nearer to mastering a good many aspects of cooking than anyone except a handful of great chefs, and some day it will pay off. I know it will. You will just have to go on working, and teaching, and getting around, and spreading the gospel until it does. (Avis DeVoto to Julia Child)

I am in a state about all of this. I comb the newspapers. I listen to the commentators. And I get into fights all over the place. If a Republican knows his place and hates McCarthy and wishes to God Eisenhower would get more aggressive about these bastards, well and good and I will admit him to the brotherhood. If he says nasty things about Truman (who is rapidly becoming the Man I Love although I have been sore enough at him in my time) or still thinks taxes are coming down and we can get out of Korea‡ and we ought to fire all the Democrats in Washington and don’t worry, McCarthy-ism will blow over or alternately Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire—well, dear, I am no lady and I argue loudly and lose my temper and it’s disgraceful.

Of course, an old wine is like an old lady, and traveling can disturb her.

My, I get so depressed after a poor meal; that's why I can never stay in England for more than a week. Julia to Avis

It is horrible how people will use anything as a political monkey wrench and to hell with the country. (Julia Child to Avis DeVoto)

I am chewing my nails off to the elbow, like Noel Coward’s lady.

Dorothy says she ducks invitations to dine with young married people because she can’t, at her age, take the casserole any more—she described one composed of pork chops and canned Bing cherries, after which she came home and was sick.