The Dinner Party Quotes

#1. You better have some skills in this world. You better bring something to the dinner party or you will be the dinner.

Bryant McGill

#2. Somewhere in the back of their minds, hosts and guests alike know that the dinner party is a source of untold irritation, and that even the dullest evening spent watching television is preferable.

Craig Brown

#3. I listen to a lot of podcasts, which are split down the middle between comedy and board game podcasts, and a couple of eclectic ones like 'The Dinner Party' from NPR, where they take an event that happened that week in history and give you a cocktail recipe inspired by it.

Rich Sommer

#4. The dinner party is a suburban form of entertainment. Its spread in our big cities represents an insidious Fifth Column suburbanization of the metropolis.

Phillip Lopate

#5. I first saw 'The Dinner Party' in 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. While perusing the Heritage Panels, which honor 999 women who have made important contributions to Western history, I came upon the names of two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke.

Sue Monk Kidd

#6. The time is come when women must do something more than the "domestic hearth," which means nursing the infants, keeping a pretty house, having a good dinner and an entertaining party.

Florence Nightingale

#7. Coffee: Induces wit. Good only if it comes through Havre. After a big dinner party it is taken standing up. Take it without sugar - very swank: gives the impression you have lived in the East.

Gustave Flaubert

#8. The LPGA is basically corporate America's dinner party, and they can invite whomever they want. They're not ready for people getting up and making declarations. The bottom line is corporate America is pretty homophobic.

Hollis Stacy

#9. If you want to keep people happy, just keep the food and entertainment rolling.

E.A. Bucchianeri

#10. At a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.

George Carlin

#11. Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.

Ann Patchett

#12. There is definitely a comeback of the idea of dressing well every day. Nowadays, suits can be worn for many occasions - to work or to school, to a dinner party or red carpet event.

Brunello Cucinelli

#13. Why do people who read Shakespeare still spend hours watching shitty TV or staring out of the window or arguing about whose dinner party to go to?

Glen Duncan

#14. A high-school girl, seated next to a famous astronomer at a dinner party, struck up a conversation with him by asking: "What do you do for a living?" "I study astronomy," he replied. "Really? said the teenager, wide-eyed. "I finished astronomy last year."

James Keller

#15. Like those dreaded dinner party words 'Longtime Companion' or Partner.' Sometimes I just want to scream, 'is she your wife or is she your mistress? Please clarify the nature of your bloody relationship!

Suzanne Stroh

#16. There is nothing like roast chicken. It is helpful and agreeable, the perfect dish no matter what the circumstances. Elegant or homey, a dish for a dinner party or a family supper, it will not let you down.

Laurie Colwin

#17. Think of a dinner party as a club of revolutionaries, a technocratic elite whose social interactions that night are a dry run for some future takeover of the state.

Phillip Lopate

#18. The day comes in the life of every single man living alone when he must give a dinner party, however unpretentious, and that day had now arrived for Rupert Stonebird.

Barbara Pym

#19. [On the socialites in New York in the Nineties who devoted themselves to politics, charities, and other volunteer work:] I never knew but one woman who devoted her life exclusively to the social game. She ended her days arranging dinner parties with paper dolls, a breakdown pitiful to watch.

Margaret Case Harriman

#20. I believe the potluck tradition of entertaining is the equivalent of a teenage boy wanting to have sex with his girlfriend but who is too scared to go to CVS to buy condoms. If you can't handle providing all the courses for your dinner party, you can't handle the hosting duties of a dinner party.

Mindy Kaling

#21. President Obama hosted a state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron. The president and the British are getting along a lot better lately. They love to compare notes on ways the Tea Party's always trying to overthrow their rule in America.

Argus Hamilton

#22. The end of a novel, like the end of children's dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plum

Anthony Trollope

#23. She had gone to a dinner party in her honor the night before the opening, and everyone had asked, with precisely the same intonation, as though it was a piece of urban Gregorian chant, Where have you been?

Anna Quindlen

#24. I love a small dinner party - let's say six people, max, were everybody's having the same conversation. That's my favorite thing in the world.

Paul F. Tompkins

#25. Claire lifted her glass after everyone had eaten. "Everyone make a toast. To food and flowers," she said.
"To love and laughter," Tyler said.
"To old and new," Henry said.
"To what's next," Evanelle said.
"To the apple tree," Bay said.

Sarah Addison Allen

#26. I always like to think I'm having a dinner party, and I'm the host, and the audience are my guests.

Caroline Rhea

#27. When I'm in need of a quick meal or party dish, a burger is hands-down my go-to pick! Burgers are easy, fast, and don't even require utensils to eat, making them the perfect get-together main course, tailgating essential, and simple dinner recipe to whip up any night of the week.

Marcus Samuelsson

#28. The song 'Humiliation' is kind of about what if, outside of a dinner party or something, I was blown up by a drone missile, out by the pool. What an embarrassing way to go.

Matt Berninger

#29. One thing about the fantasy dinner party idea that no one considers is whether these people are going to get on. I would say John McEnroe and Ian McEwan, but what would they have to say to each other?

Robert Webb

#30. I spend a good portion of my dinner-party conversation defending America because no matter what the political agenda, it's still a fantastic, amazing place.

Gwyneth Paltrow

#31. I try to get them working. My older son is 10 and he's pretty interested. We had a dinner party the other night and he helped a lot. He helped peel asparagus; he hung out. It was great.

Todd English

#32. Planning a dinner party in a way that you're actually capable of getting it done without panicking is important. It's bad hospitality for the host to be freaked out.

Ted Allen

#33. Sigmund Freud makes people irritable. Whenever someone mentions Freud, say, at a dinner party, I see eyes roll and listen to the nasty remarks that follow.

Siri Hustvedt

#34. The best number for a dinner party is two; myself and a damn good head waiter.

Nubar Gulbenkian

#35. The summer of 2002 at the Wilson birthday party I met Van Dyke again and I made plans to have dinner with him.

Matthew Sweet

#36. I felt like the girl who showed up at a formal dinner party in jeans and a Pink Floyd T-shirt. Probably 'cause I did that once.

Darynda Jones

#37. In the future, the number of languages being spoken will not matter. You could host a dinner party with eight different languages, and the voice your ear will always be whispering the one language you want to hear.

Alec J. Ross

#38. Mixed dinner parties of ladies and gentlemenare very rare, which is a great defect in the society; not only as depriving themof the most social and hospitable manner of meeting, but as leading to frequent dinner parties of gentlemen without ladies, which certainly does not conduce to refinement.

Frances Trollope

#39. It makes it really hard to just go to a dinner party because, in my work life, I'm surrounded by the funniest people, ever. I'm really spoiled. I laugh a lot, in my day.

Jenna Fischer

#40. I was brought up in a way that when you're at a dinner party, you don't grab a chip unless it's been offered to everyone else. It's the manners of being brought up by English parents.

Hugh Jackman

#41. In England especially, I've found that if you bring up King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson at a dinner party or a social gathering, it's like throwing a Molotov cocktail into the room.

Madonna Ciccone

#42. I met a hustler at a dinner party. He had been invited because I was looking for an adviser to help me with the street scenes. So we put him on the film.

John Schlesinger

#43. When I say I want to possess a woman for a day, maybe a whole weekend, it's like I'm inviting her to a dinner party. I'm making exactly the food I want, serving the drinks I like, planning everything. But she's the guest. Just because I'm in charge doesn't mean I won't serve her a damn good meal.

Cara McKenna

#44. I learned that the hardest party to pull off successfully is Saturday night dinner. This meal is expected to be elaborate: appetizers, first course, dinner, dessert, and coffee. People arrive at 7:30 or 8 p.m. and stay for hours - definitely past my bedtime - and they all go home exhausted.

Ina Garten

#45. When writing a thank-you if you've had lunch with someone downtown, send an e-mail. If somebody is giving you a dinner party in his or her home and all the work that takes, that person deserves a written thank-you.

Letitia Baldrige

#46. I like to wear dresses and skirts when I go onstage because the attitude that I have is, 'I'm so excited to introduce myself to you.' And I want to be wearing what I'd be wearing to a date or a dinner party.

Jenny Slate

#47. I adore summer entertaining. For a dinner party at the farm, I might prepare homemade fettuccine with porcini mushrooms, soft-shell crabs, spinach from the garden, and lemon tarts with fraises des bois for dessert.

Martha Stewart

#48. You've got to have the right attire for the right event. I attend a lot of dinners, a lot of concerts, and I have to be on the red carpet; each has its own dress code, and I have to be prepared. Jeans and a hoodie are great for a concert, but a dinner party?

Amar'e Stoudemire

#49. and a barge that sailed into the banqueting-hall with his week's washing, just as he was giving a dinner-party; and he was

Kenneth Grahame

#50. A guest at a dinner party observed the strange expression on James Thurber's face. 'Don't be concerned,' said Thurber's wife. 'He's writing.'

Sophy Burnham

#51. While overseeing tonight's dinner party, I finally found myself in the presence of Mr. Edwards's famed wit when he asked me whether I had visited the zoo to see the puffins. Somehow Miss Wyndham was the one forced to leave the house.

Tarun Shanker

#52. New York is like a big dinner party. You have to be very careful about what you say and do because you never know whose feet are touching under the table.

Susanna Moore

#53. The formal Washington dinner party has all the spontaneity of a Japanese imperial funeral.

Simon Hoggart

#54. The dying process begins the minute we are born, but it accelerates during dinner parties.

Carol Grace

#55. Food became, for dinner parties in the sixties, what abstract expressionism had been in the fifties.

Nora Ephron

#56. MY TOUGHEST MATCH; is not on the mat. It's at the dinner table and it's at fast food restaurants. It's hearing about the party I can Never go to. It's realizing being a Great Wrestler isn't a sport, It's a LIFE.

Stephen Neal

#57. It's as though some poor devil were to set out for a large dinner party with the knowledge that the following morning he would be hearing exactly what each of the other guests thought of him.

Cornelia Otis Skinner

#58. I'm a really good dinner party guest. I am always so appreciative, impressed that anyone has even managed to turn on the oven and cook for me.

Lucy Punch

#59. First base was a far richer social opportunity. First base made catching feeling like a bad dinner party - what with the ump hanging on your shoulder and all the fans and cameras staring at you. At first base you could really talk.

Michael Lewis

#60. Think beyond the vase! If you have a vase of flowers on a dining table for a quick dinner party, think about scattering flower petals, leaves, or even fruit along the tabletop.

Clinton Smith

#61. In any restaurant, my eyes alight first, as if by an atavistic pull, on the meat dishes on the menu. In any dinner party I throw, I think of the non-vegetarian dish as central. I view this as a combination of weakness, greed and moral failure. Someone please help.

Neel Mukherjee

#62. All of our panelists are deeply engaged in the topics at hand, so that leaves me free to convene a little dinner party, sans alcohol, and invite the rest of America to listen in.

Gwen Ifill

#63. I remember saying things, but I have no idea what was said. It was generally a friendly conversation. - Associated Press reporter Jack Sullivan, attempting to recount a 3 A.M. exchange we had at a dinner party and inadvertently describing the past ten years of my life.

Chuck Klosterman

#64. With whiskey, the capillary bloom was more diffusely rosy than with gin and less purple than with wine. Every university dinner party was a study in blooms.

Jonathan Franzen

#65. In terms of 'Solaris,' I didn't really think about the religious aspect an awful lot. There's one scene at a dinner party, and it's discussed, but it wasn't an overwhelming theme for me.

Natascha McElhone

#66. You wear your armor even to dinner, Lady Wilhelmina?"
"Of course I wear armor. I am sitting with a pirate, a mercenary, an adventurer, and a bounder. If a shot is not fired tonight, I daresay that your reputations are nothing but lies.

Meljean Brook

#67. I think middle age begins once you start looking forward to eating dinner before six thirty, or when you call the cops when your next-door neighbor has a party.

Amy Poehler

#68. I find my characters and stories in many varied places; sometimes they pop out of newspaper articles, obscure historical texts, lively dinner party conversations and some even crawl out of the dusty remote recesses of my imagination.

Lynn Nottage

#69. If George W. Bush is the kind of person folks might like to have a beer with, John McCain is the guy you pray you don't get seated next to at a dinner party.

Ellen Malcolm

#70. I have two choices: attend my sister's dinner party or tie a plastic sack around my mother's head until she runs out of ngagging. I choose the evil that doesn't come witha felony conviction.

Alex Adams

#71. Whereas Jeremy is just the opposite: always moving because he's never really thinking of anything and the kind of guy you'd worry inviting to a dinner party because he says what he thinks. He can be insulting at times but doesn't mean to be.

Jason Schwartzman

#72. When we were working on 'Julie & Julia,' I went back to the Julia Child cookbook and made some things I haven't made in a while, one being beef bourguignon, which to me is a hilariously 1960s dish that everyone felt they had to serve at a dinner party or they weren't a grown-up.

Nora Ephron

#73. My girlfriend and I went to a dinner party the other night and we ended up playing charades. There was another couple there that was deaf. They were so good.

Zach Galifianakis

#74. I love kids, but I have to be honest: I am that person at a dinner party who's a little relieved when the kids go to bed.

Jonathan Slavin

#75. The half-hour before dinner has always been considered as the great ordeal through which the mistress, in giving a dinner-party, will either pass with flying colours, or lose many of her laurels.

Isabella Beeton

#76. Is there anything sadder than the scrawniest little piece of uneaten chicken at a dinner party?"
"Hmm," said Jules. "Yes. The Holocaust.

Meg Wolitzer

#77. I often feel I'm a disappointment to people because they expect me to be the guy in the books. When I sit next to someone at a dinner party I can see they expect me to be quick and witty, and I'm not at all.

Bill Bryson

#78. Once you've got a big feminist and political justification for talking about how you went round to Benedict Cumberbatch's house and did period all over his sofa, then there's no reason not to tell that anecdote in the middle of a dinner party.

Caitlin Moran

#79. There is etiquette in golf, but it's not any harder to learn than what to do at a dinner party. Actually, it's probably easier. And these days, there are a lot more women out there than there used to be. It's not like when I was young. I was always the only girl on the range.

Paula Creamer

#80. All through that winter and into the spring, when our Tuesday and Thursday-night dinner shifts were done, Matt and I would sit at the long table near the salad bar and plan his end-of-the-year party, our voices echoing importantly in the cavernous wood-panelled dining hall.

Tom Perrotta

#81. I can get a better grasp of what is going on in the world from one good Washington dinner party than from all the background information NBC piles on my desk.

Barbara Walters

#82. A photographer went to a socialite party in New York. As he entered the front door, the host said 'I love your pictures - they're wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.' He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: 'That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.

Sam Haskins

#83. I try to greet my friends with a drink in my hand, a warm smile on my face, and great music in the background, because that's what gets a dinner party off to a fun start.

Ina Garten

#84. I'm with you, networking is miserable. Whenever I find myself at a dinner party where people are networking I immediately focus on the dog, and if the host doesn't have one, I focus on persuading them to get a dog.

Jon Acuff

#85. That which chiefly causes the failure of a dinner-party, is the running short
not of meat, nor yet of drink, but of conversation.

Lewis Carroll

#86. When we're discussing who to invite to a dinner party, my wife Chaz and I sometimes use the shorthand, 'good value for money,' which indicates guests expected to be entertaining.

Roger Ebert

#87. At your next dinner party, try playing the following game. Challenge everyone around the table to produce a single drug that can cure people of an illness, other then antibiotics. If you come up with anything, stop whatever you are doing and call me.

Lynne McTaggart

#88. The perfect party for me is having six to 12 people for dinner Friday or Saturday - good, fun friends, a lot of artists. I have a beautiful deck that looks over the canyon and Los Angeles on one side, so it's very pretty at night. It's a great opportunity to catch up with friends.

Sofia Milos

#89. Telling people at a dinner party you drive a Nissan Almera is like telling them you've got the Ebola virus and you're about to sneeze.

Jeremy Clarkson

#90. I've never been to a dinner party where everyone at the dinner table didn't say something funny.

Lorrie Moore