Some sensible person once remarked that you spend the whole of your life either in your bed or in your shoes. Having done the best you can by shoes and bed, devote all the time and resources at your disposal to the building up of a fine kitchen. It will be, as it should be, the most comforting and comfortable room in the house.

I would probably never have learned to cook.

To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean.

I don't copy recipes without trying them out. I don't reprint without trying them again.

Summer cooking implies a sense of immediacy, a capacity to capture the essence of the fleeting moment.

Provence is a country to which I am always returning, next week, next year, any day now, as soon as I can get on a train.

Every day holds the possibility of a miracle.