War is a beastly business, it is true, but one proof we are human is our ability to learn, even from it, how better to exist

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

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.

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.

Hunger is more than a problem of belly and guts, and ... the satisfying of it can and must and does nourish the spirit as well as the body.

Having bowed to the inevitability of the dictum that we must eat to live, we should ignore it and live to eat.

It is hard and perhaps impossible for many people to recognize the difference between innocence and naiveté.