It is impossible to think of any good meal, no matter how plain or elegant, without soup or bread in it

... living out of sight of any shore does rich and powerfully strange things to humans.

Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures.

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

There's a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.

I was horribly self-conscious; I wanted everybody to look at me and think me the most fascinating creature in the world, and yet I died a small hideous death if I saw even one person throw a casual glance at me.

It is a curious fact that no man likes to call himself a glutton, and yet each of us has in him a trace of gluttony, potential or actual. I cannot believe that there exists a single coherent human being who will not confess, at least to himself, that once or twice he has stuffed himself to bursting point on anything from quail financiere to flapjacks, for no other reason than the beastlike satisfaction of his belly.