In spite of my conviction that a group of deliberately assembled relatives can be one of the dullest, if not most dangerous, gatherings in the world, I am smugly foolhardly enough to have invited all my available family, more than once, to dine with me.

Sharing our meals should be a joyful and a trustful act, rather than the cursory fulfillment of our social obligations.

Painting, it is true, was undergoing a series of -isms reminiscent of the whims of a pregnant woman.

People ask me: "Why do you write about food, and eating, and drinking? Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way the others do?" . . . The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.

But if I must be alone, I refuse to be alone as if it were something weak and distasteful, like convalescence.

Cooks must feed their egos as well as their customers.

One ... aspect of the case for World War II is that while it was still a shooting affair it taught us survivors a great deal about daily living which is valuable to us now that it is, ethically at least, a question of cold weapons and hot words.