#oven

With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven. ↗

— Studs Terkel

#because #despair #head #hope #i

America is woven of many strands. I would recognise them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description. ↗

— Ralph Ellison

#become #description #fate #i #many

A cake is a very good test of an oven: if it browns too much on one side and not on the other, it's not your fault - you need to have your oven checked. ↗

— Delia Smith

#cake #checked #fault #good #much

The last two times I went to spring training, I had to win a job, and if I didn't get off to a blazing start, I'm on the bench. Now, I've proven myself, so it's not essential that I get off to a real good start. ↗

— Eric Davis

#blazing #essential #get #good #had

I don't allow meat in my house or in my oven. My whole family is vegetarian - and although I've given my kids the choice to order meat at a restaurant when they reach five, they're not interested. ↗

— Sadie Frost

#although #choice #family #five #given

I'm a Beethoven freak. I listen to him all the time. ↗

— David Canary

#freak #him #i #listen #time

Mistakes and dead-ends often mean more to these artists than any proven problem. ↗

— Robert Smithson

#artists #mean #mistakes #more #often

It was the quartets of Beethoven (numbers 12,13,14, and 15) which over fifty years, created and expanded the the audience of listeners to the quartets of Beethoven, thus achieving, as all masterpieces do, progress if not in the quality of artists, at least in the company of minds, which is largely composed these days of what was missing when the work appeared: people capable of liking it. ↗

— Marcel Proust

#beethoven #genius #art

I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing. ↗

— John Berryman

#artists #beethoven #goya #literature #luck

The effect of the weather on the inhabitants of Provence is immediate and obvious. They expect every day to be sunny, and their disposition suffers when it isn't. Rain they take as a personal affront, shaking their heads and commiserating with each other in the cafes, looking with profound suspicion at the sky as though a plague of locusts is about to descend, and picking their way with distaste through the puddles on the pavement. If anything worse than a rainy day should come along, such as this sub-zero snap, the result is startling: most the population disappears... But what did everyone else do? The earth was frozen, the vines were clipped and dormant, it was too cold to hunt. Had they all gone on holiday?...It was a puzzle, until we realized how many of the local people had their birthdays in September or October, and then a possible but unverifiable answer suggested itself: they were busy indoors making babies. There is a season for everything in Provence, and the first two months of the year must be devoted to procreation. We have never dared to ask. ↗

— Peter Mayle

#business