Your attitude measures up to the two requirements of love. You want to go to bed with her and can't, and you don't know her very well. Ignorance of the other person topped up with deprivation, Jim. You fit the formula all right, and what's more you want to go on fitting it.

We should be wrong to demand that a critic must stay on the point all the time; it is enough if he remains in orbit around it.

Outside every fat man there is an even fatter man trying to close in.

Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naive - or worse.

I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented under the banner of pate than any other.

A German wine label is one of the things life's too short for, a daunting testimony to that peculiar nation's love of detail and organization.

When starting to think about any novel, part of the motive is: I'm going to show them, this time.