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Life's Pleasures Quote by Paul Lynde

"My kitchen is not a place to live in. I made it white so I can tell instantly if it's not clean-and I like it clean enough to be able to eat off the floors-or the tables, for that matter"

About this Quote

Paul Lynde turns domestic space into a punchline by treating the kitchen less like a room and more like a moral test. The first sentence draws a hard border: this is not a warm, lived-in hearth; it’s a controlled environment. Then he pivots into the real joke: whiteness as surveillance. “I made it white so I can tell instantly if it’s not clean” reads like a homeowner’s tip, but the speed of “instantly” gives away the neurosis underneath. Cleanliness isn’t about comfort, it’s about certainty.

Lynde’s comic intent is to inflate a familiar mid-century anxiety - the pressure to present a perfect home - until it becomes absurd. “Eat off the floors” is already a culturally recognized exaggeration; he sharpens it by adding “or the tables, for that matter,” as if floors and tables are competing surfaces in a hygiene Olympics. That little tag is classic Lynde: arch, fussy, and slightly contemptuous of the very standard he’s performing.

There’s also a sly social subtext. In an era when kitchens were coded as women’s domain and domestic order doubled as respectability, Lynde weaponizes fastidiousness as a kind of camp authority: he’s not nurturing anyone, he’s running quality control. The whiteness signals purity, but also sterility, a refusal of mess, bodies, and everyday life. The laugh comes from recognizing how perfection, pushed just a notch too far, starts to sound like a person trying to scrub away more than crumbs.

Quote Details

TopicWitty One-Liners
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Lynde, Paul. (2026, January 16). My kitchen is not a place to live in. I made it white so I can tell instantly if it's not clean-and I like it clean enough to be able to eat off the floors-or the tables, for that matter. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-kitchen-is-not-a-place-to-live-in-i-made-it-128530/

Chicago Style
Lynde, Paul. "My kitchen is not a place to live in. I made it white so I can tell instantly if it's not clean-and I like it clean enough to be able to eat off the floors-or the tables, for that matter." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-kitchen-is-not-a-place-to-live-in-i-made-it-128530/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"My kitchen is not a place to live in. I made it white so I can tell instantly if it's not clean-and I like it clean enough to be able to eat off the floors-or the tables, for that matter." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-kitchen-is-not-a-place-to-live-in-i-made-it-128530/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Paul Lynde on the White Kitchen
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About the Author

Paul Lynde

Paul Lynde (June 13, 1926 - January 10, 1982) was a Comedian from USA.

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