It is a fact of life that people give dinner parties, and when they invite you, you have to turn around and invite them back. Often they retaliate by inviting you again, and you must then extend another invitation. Back and forth you go, like Ping-Pong balls, and what you end up with is called social life.

When life is hard and the day has been long, the ideal dinner is not four perfect courses, each in a lovely pool of sauce whose ambrosial flavors are like nothing ever before tasted, but rather something comforting and savory, easy on the digestion - something that makes one feel, if even for only a minute, that one is safe.

Cookbooks hit you where you live. You want comfort; you want security; you want food; you want to not be hungry and not only do you want those basic things fixed, you want it done in a really nice, gentle way that makes you feel loved. That's a big desire, and cookbooks say to the person reading them, 'If you will read me, you will be able to do this for yourself and for others. You will make everybody feel better.'

Many people eat salad dutifully because they feel it is good for them, but more enlightened types eat it happily because it is good.

People who like to cook like to talk about food....without one cook giving another cook a tip or two, human life might have died out a long time ago.

There is nothing like soup. It is by nature eccentric: no two are ever alike, unless of course you get your soup in a can.

The old days were slower. People buttered their bread without guilt and sat down to dinner en famille.