Picnic Quotes

“I’ll affect you slowly
as if you were having a picnic in a dream.
There will be no ants.
It won’t rain.”
― Richard Brautigan, Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork

“Be there a picnic for the devil,
an orgy for the satyr,
and a wedding for the bride.”
― Roman Payne, The Basement Trains: A 21st Century Poem

“I simply cannot see why one would wish to picnic in the nude. There would be ants in dreadful places.”
― Cassandra Clare, Chain of Gold

“A picnic basket in Paris is like a treasure chest- untold riches in a limited space. The first apricots had appeared at the market, their skins fading from speckled red to glowing orange to burnished gold, like the sun-bleached walls of an Italian villa. There were tiny cucumbers, as thick as my thumb and curled like a ribbon. I'd become obsessed with a new fruit called a pêche plat, a flat peach. Imagine a perfectly ripe white peach that someone has sat on. Gwendal picked up a tomato and bit into it like an apple. I did the same.
At the bottom of the basket was a carefully folded square of waxed paper. Inside was a small mound of rillettes, shredded pork cooked in its own fat until meltingly smooth.”
― Elizabeth Bard, Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes

“Terence's idea of roughing it consisted of pork pie, veal pie, cold roast beef, a ham, pickles, pickled eggs, pickled beets, cheese, bread and butter, ginger beer and a bottle of port. It was possibly the best meal I had ever had in my life.”
― Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog

“Mr. Tridden told them how it had been twenty years ago, the band playing on that ornate stand at night, the men pumping air into their brass horns, the plump conductor flinging perspiration from his baton, the children and fireflies running in the deep grass, the ladies with long dresses and high pompadours treading the wooden xylophone walks with men in choking collars. There was the walk now, all softened into a fiber mush by the years. The lake was silent and blue and serene, and fish peacefully threaded the bright reeds, and the motorman murmured on and on, and the children felt it was some other year, with Mr. Tridden looking wonderfully young, his eyes lighted like small bulbs, blue and electric. It was a drifting, easy day, nobody rushing, and the forest all about, the sun held in one position, as Mr. Tridden's voice rose and fell, and a darning needle sewed along the air, stitching, restitching designs both holden and invisible. A bee settled into a flower, humming and humming.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“She leaned over the basket again, taking in the mouthwatering aromas wafting out of it. "Fried chicken? Oh, I'm thinking buttermilk fried chicken?"
Dylan was once again amused. "How do you do that?"
"I like food."
"You don't say."
"And I love Southern fried chicken." She tried to open the basket, and he tapped her hand jokingly.
"Sit," he said.
And she did, crossing her legs and plopping down on the blanket.
Opening the basket and playing waiter, Dylan began removing flatware and plates and red-checkered napkins, and then wrapped food. "For lunch today in Chez Orchard de Pomme, we have some lovely cheese, made from the milk of my buddy Mike's goat Shelia." He removed the plastic wrap, which covered a small log of fresh white cheese on a small plate, and handed it to her.
Grace put her nose to the cheese. It was heavenly. "Oh, Shelia is my new best friend."
"It's good stuff. And we have some fresh chili corn bread. The corn, I think, is from Peter Lindsey's new crop, just cut out from the maze, which is right down this hill." He motioned with his head toward the field, and then he handed her a big loaf of the fresh corn bread wrapped loosely in wax paper.
"It's still warm!" Delighted, she held it to her cheek.
Then he pulled out a large oval Tupperware container. "And, yes, we have Dolly's buttermilk fried chicken."
Grace peeled open the top and smelled. "Fabulous."
"It is!"
He also pulled out a mason jar of sourwood honey, a sack of pecans, and a couple of very cold bottles of a local mountain-brewed beer.”
― Jeffrey Stepakoff, The Orchard

“My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“The year 1694 witnessed the first recorded use of the word 'picnic', in the form of the French phrase repas à picnïque. Initially a repas à picnïque was a meal (not necessarily outdoors) at which each diner contributed a share of the food, or paid for their own share.
The word may derive from Middle French piquer, 'steal, pilfer', and nique, which denoted a small copper coin, hence figuratively, 'nothing at all'. The word 'picnic' is first recorded in English in 1748, apparently in the context of a meal eaten at the card table. Only later, it seems, did picnics move out of doors.”
― Ian Crafton

“Cosima and Tommy sit on Midsummer Common, under a tree on the patch of grass where they first met. As is their tradition, Cosima has baked a plethora of goodies: sour cherry and chocolate cupcakes, goat's cheese and pesto pizzas, orange oil cannoli, and- Tommy's personal favorite- lemon and lavender cake.”
― Menna van Praag, The Witches of Cambridge

“After Sims and the footmen had departed, Ethan sat with his back against the tree trunk and watched as Garrett unearthed a feast from the hampers. There were boiled eggs, plump olives, stalks of crisp green celery, jars of pickled carrots and cucumbers, sandwiches wrapped in paraffin paper, cold fried oyster-patties and wafer crackers, jars of finely chopped salads, a weighty round of white cheese, muslin-lined baskets filled with finger cakes and pastry biscuits, a steamed cabinet pudding left in its fluted stoneware mold, and a wide-mouthed glass bottle filled with stewed fruit.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Hello Stranger

“Plus, Mama packed a good picnic. That night she brought us plenty of ham sandwiches and Lay's potato chips, plus orange slices and Oatmeal Caramelitas, a salty, buttery layer of oats topped with chocolate chips, walnuts, and melted Kraft caramels.”
― Susan Rebecca White, A Place at the Table

“She serves us, pouring the iced tea into red plastic cups, piling chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, and a couple of biscuits each onto our plates. It's an almost entirely brown meal. Mama would say it needs a colorful vegetable to complete it, but brown or not, it tastes good. Salty and hot, except for the tea of course, which is cold and sweet.”
― Susan Rebecca White, A Place at the Table

“I told her one of the few stories that she'd told me of myself as a child. We'd gone to a park by a lake. I was no older than two. Me, my father, and my mother. There was an enormous tree with branches so long and droopy that my father moved the picnic table from underneath it. He was always afraid of me getting crushed. My mother believed that kids had stronger bones than grownups.
"There's more calcium in her forearm than in an entire dairy farm," she liked to say.
That day, my mother had made roasted tomato and goat cheese sandwiches with salmon she'd smoked herself, and I ate, she said, double my weight of it. She was complimenting me when she said that. I always wondered if eating so much was my best way of complimenting her.
The story went that all through lunch I kept pointing at a gaping hole in the tree, reaching for it, waving at it. My parents thought it was just that: a hole, one that had been filled with fall leaves, stiff and brown, by some kind of ferrety animal. But I wasn't satisfied with that explanation. I wouldn't give up.
"What?" my father kept asking me. "What do you see?"
I ate my sandwiches, drank my sparkling hibiscus drink, and refused to take my eyes off the hole. "It was as if you were flirting with it," my mother said, "the way you smiled and all."
Finally, I squealed, "Butter fire!"
Some honey upside-down cake went flying from my mouth.
"Butter fire?" they asked me. "Butter fire?"
"Butter fire!" I yelled, pointing, reaching, waving.
They couldn't understand. There was nothing interesting about the leaves in the tree. They wondered if I'd seen a squirrel.
"Chipmunk?" they asked. "Owl?"
I shook my head fiercely. No. No. No.
"Butter fire!" I screamed so loudly that I sent hundreds of the tightly packed monarchs that my parents had mistaken for leaves exploding in the air in an eruption of lava-colored flames.
They went soaring wildly, first in a vibrating clump and then as tiny careening postage stamps, floating through the sky.
They were proud of me that day, my parents. My father for my recognition of an animal so delicate and precious, and my mother because I'd used a food word, regardless of what I'd actually meant.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“They sat under a walnut tree on wooden benches draped with kilims and soon the table was covered with small dishes of yogurt, olives cured with angelica, eggplant and whey cooked to a silky paste, piles of basil, cilantro, and tarragon, and a pitcher of doogh, the tangy yogurt drink spiked with mint”
― Donia Bijan, The Last Days of Café Leila

“We have fresh mozz, heirloom tomatoes, basil, and a sprinkling of goat cheese on your panini. It was warm at one point this evening, but the flavors only get better as you let them moosh."
"Moosh?" My stomach rumbled as I unwrapped the sandwich. "Sounds technical." I stopped talking because my first bite demanded a respectful silence. The crunch of crispy exterior gave way to an extroverted, summery flavor: notes of salt and a splash of bright tomato, still-warm mozzarella... I heard a sigh escape my lips and saw Kai thoroughly enjoying my enjoyment. "This," I said, mouth still full, "is perfect."
His eyes widened around his own bite of panini. Blotting his chin with a napkin, he said, "Good. That's what I was aiming for." He pointed to a collection of plastic containers. "After you've regained your composure, we also have my grandmother's famous new potato salad with bacon and cider vinaigrette, sliced mango and strawberries, and a triple-layer chocolate cake for dessert.”
― Kimberly Stuart, Sugar

“I said a picnic,' said Quin sternly. 'In Britain a picnic means sitting on the ground and being uncomfortable, preferably in the rain.”
― Eva Ibbotson, The Morning Gift

“We made a fire and cooked the clams, adding some wild onions and sea asparagus for flavor, and ate out of bowls made of abalone shells, with mussel shells for spoons and berries for dessert.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Life is neither a picnic nor a pain”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“In a doubting democracy the picnic is often gatecrashed by the government.”
― Mantaranjot Mangat, Plotless

“There was loads of food set up on a large picnic table just outside the kitchen door. Potato salad with green beans. Sautéed squash with onions and garlic. Tomatoes on their own, or stuffed with cream cheese, or with rice and peppers. Bowls of salad, dressed and undressed. Fresh bread. Berry pie, berry cobbler, berries and cream. Pretty much everything had been grown by the class, and it was enormously satisfying to eat it all.”
― Abbi Waxman, The Garden of Small Beginnings

“You might expect such a grand hamper to be filled with smoked salmon, a cocktail of olives---ciabatta bread, perhaps. But no. Marcus knows that my taste in food runs to the far side of the Philistine. Instead, the hamper is packed with pork pies, hot pizza wrapped in foil, Walkers crisps, Pringles, my very favorite muffins from Chocolate Heaven and, in its own little cooler, a tub of Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream.”
― Carole Matthews, The Chocolate Lovers' Club

“オンラインゲームをプレイするのにうんざりしていて、インドネシアで人気のあるたまり場や自然のアトラクションを見つけたい場合は、インドネシアで最高の休暇スポットの推奨事項を常に提供するサイトに直接アクセスできます。”
― picnicgardenflushing

“At the state park, they hiked up to a meadow covered with soft grass and golden poppies. Jerome spread out a blanket, and they lazed in the sunshine and had their lunch. The sliders and sheet cake were a hit, as she had known they would be. The sandwiches had been a food truck staple---thin slices of house-cured pastrami, garlic dill kraut, Swiss cheese, and Russian dressing, the rolls slathered with herb butter and crunchy seeds and salt.”
― Susan Wiggs, Sugar and Salt

“Darling, my darling-- have you ever been to a picnic? And someone blows up a balloon, and everyone starts tossing it around? And the balloon drifts and it catches the light, and it's always just about to touch the ground, but someone always gets there just in time, to tap it back up. That balloon-- that's God. The very best in all of us.”
― Paul Rudnick, Jeffrey

“The two of us begin assembling pulled pork sandwiches from the ingredients in the containers, layering the jalapeño-lime slaw on top of piles of chipotle pork and capping it off with a fluffy white bun. The sandwiches are smoky and spicy, with a slight tang from the slaw, and we wash them down with hefty swigs of our full-bodied porter. Between bites, Jeremy hands me a fork and the container of Yukon gold and purple potato salad, which we pass back and forth until there is nothing left but a few scallions in a pool of mustard-laced vinaigrette.”
― Dana Bate, A Second Bite at the Apple

“Gran and I were on a blanket eating one of her famous baguette sandwiches, something with ham and butter and little cornichon pickles. Gran was telling me how to pronounce "jambon aux beurre," the French name for a ham and butter sandwich.”
― Victoria Benton Frank, My Magnolia Summer

“I jumped out of the truck and went to the bed. I blew up a twin-sized air mattress and covered it with a thick, red, patterned Aztec blanket. I'd brought some heavy blankets and pillows and propped them against the back window so we had something to lean on. I lit a citronella candle for the one or two mosquitoes that might be out this time of year and put it on the roof. Then I plugged in some white Christmas lights to a portable power inverter and ran those along the sides to give us some light to eat by. ... There was homemade goat cheese with sliced pears drizzled in honey, dried fruits, bruschetta sandwiches on his fresh baked crusty bread that he made himself with his own sourdough starter, two thermoses with hot chocolate in them.”
― Abby Jimenez, Part of Your World

“What do you think of the kombucha?“ he asks.

It tastes like sadness.

I don’t tell him this, of course. Mostly because my mouth is still full and both unable and unwilling to swallow.

Instead, I draw a deep breath through my nose, telling myself that on the count of three, I’ll force it down.

One…

Two…

I’m too late.

My gag reflex overpowers my sheer will. Instead of swallowing, I spray. Like a Saturday-morning cartoon. All over the picnic blanket.”
― Kate Robb, Prime Time Romance

“White-paper boxes of cakes with lemon icing and pink cherry blossoms appear on the grass; salmon sushi in shallow lacquered trays and triangles of snow-white onigiri wrapped in sheets of dried seaweed. Even the sugar buns from the bakers are decorated with pink blossom.”
― Nigel Slater, A Thousand Feasts: Small Moments of Joy… A Memoir of Sorts