Life & Wisdom Quote by Christopher Morley

Morley turns a plate of spaghetti into a small, comic rebuttal to modern loneliness. The line works because it sneaks up on you: it starts like a sentimental proverb about companionship, then swerves into the practical truth that spaghetti is a high-maintenance food. The “so much attention” is the punchline, but it’s also the thesis. Loneliness isn’t always cured by other people; sometimes it’s interrupted by anything that demands your full, bodily concentration.

Spaghetti is a perfect prop for this. It’s messy, tactile, mildly ridiculous. You can’t eat it while maintaining the cool detachment that makes solitude feel like exile. Twirling noodles forces a rhythm: fork, spoon, breath, negotiate the slip and resistance. That enforced mindfulness reads like a sly argument for the everyday “busy-ness” that keeps despair at bay. Morley frames attention as companionship’s understudy. If you’re absorbed, you’re not abandoned.

The subtext is also social. Spaghetti, especially in early 20th-century American culture, carries an immigrant, urban, slightly bohemian charge: a humble dish that became trendy and communal, associated with crowded restaurants and shared tables. Morley’s humor dignifies the ordinary while poking at the earnestness of self-help before self-help existed. He’s not denying loneliness; he’s puncturing its melodrama with a forkful of slapstick. The joke lands because it’s true in the way good jokes are: attention is a feeling, and it can be fed.