I want a dish to taste good, rather than to have been seethed in pig's milk and served wrapped in a rhubarb leaf with grated thistle root.

Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.

When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out.

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.

A blonde girl wearing a man's shirt but in all other visible respects unmanly to the point of outright effeminacy.

Being American is, I think, a very difficult thing in art, because all the elements are European.

How wrong people always were when they said: 'It's better to know the worst than go on not knowing either way.' No; they had it exactly the wrong way round. Tell me the truth, doctor, I'd sooner know. But only if the truth is what I want to hear.