Quote of the Day

 

I am trying to take a break from the news in Washingron by reading Blake Bailey's biography of John Cheever. Today I came across this passage:

Cheever's own attempts to communicate with his staff [in Italian] had a way of going awry. The teenage Vittoria would bring him breakfast in bed, but didn't understand that he preferred to eat his boiled egg from the shell, un-peeled. As his daughter remembered, "He studied the dictionary carefully, found the word for egg, the word for kitchen, and the word for peel. In the morning, when Vittoria appeared, he cleared his throat and carefully asked her not to peel the eggs in the kitchen. Vittoria shrieked, blushed, and rushed from the room in tears. What my father said was, 'Do not undress in the kitchen, you egg.' The fact that Vittoria had been changing her clothes in the kitchen didn't help."