Life's Pleasures Quote by Budd Schulberg

A twist on the old proverb "You can’t have your cake and eat it too", Schulberg turns a cozy domestic warning into something predatory, even cannibalistic. Swapping cake for friends isn’t just a gag; it’s an accusation. It suggests a particular kind of social operator: the person who consumes relationships for status, leverage, material gain, or a good story, then expects the warmth and loyalty of friendship to remain intact.

Schulberg’s career makes the line land harder. He knew the entertainment world and its appetite for proximity: friendships formed in ambition, then sacrificed to career moves, gossip, credits, or committee-room survival. The verb "eat" implies both desire and destruction. It’s not merely that you lose friends when you betray them; it’s that your success might be built from their disappearance, their labor, their secrets, their humiliation. The joke is doing moral work.

The line also has a cold view of human rationalization. People don’t usually think of themselves as devouring others; they call it networking, competition, necessary honesty, doing what it takes. Schulberg punctures that euphemism by making the metaphor grotesquely literal. The punchline is the demand embedded in "and have them too": the entitlement of wanting to exploit someone and still cash in on the comfort of being liked.

It’s cynicism with teeth, but it’s also practical wisdom. If your life requires you to treat people as fuel, don’t be surprised when there’s no one left at the table.