I notice that as I get rid of the protective covering of the middle years, I am more openly amused and incautious and less careful socially, and that all this makes for increasingly pleasant contacts with the world.

For me, a plain baked potato is the most delicious one....It is soothing and enough.

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

There is a communication of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk. And that is my answer when people ask me: Why do you write about hunger, and not wars or love.

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.

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.

A writing cook and a cooking writer must be bold at the desk as well as the stove.