(1944–1992)
U.S. author
Laurie Colwin
Oh, domesticity! The wonder of dinner plates and cream pitchers. You know your friends by their ornaments. You want everything. If Mrs. A has her mama’s old jelly mold, you want one, too, and everything that goes with it—the family, the tradition, the years of having jelly molded in it. We domestic sensualists live in a state of longing, no matter how comfortable our own places are.
“The Lone Pilgrim,” in The Lone Pilgrim (New York: Perennial Library, 2001), 6.
It is a fact of life that people give dinner parties, and when they invite you, you have to turn around and invite them back. Often they retaliate by inviting you again, and you must then extend another invitation. Back and forth you go, like Ping-Pong balls, and what you end up with is called social life.
“Dinner Parties,” in Home Cooking (New York: HarperPerennial, 2000) [reissued edition], 95.