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

There are may of us who cannot but feel dismal about the future of various cultures. Often it is hard not to agree that we are becoming culinary nitwits, dependent upon fast foods and mass kitchens and megavitamins for our basically rotten nourishment.

This is not that, and that is certainly not this, and at the same time an oyster stew is not stewed, and although they are made of the same things and even cooked almost the same way, an oyster soup should never be called a stew, nor stew soup.

I wrote from the time I was four. It was my way of screaming and yelling, the primal scream. I wrote like a junkie, I had to have my daily fix.

When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.

An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life.

All men are hungry. They always have been. They must eat, and when they deny themselves the pleasures of carrying out that need, they are cutting off part of their possible fullness, their natural realization of life, whether they are rich or poor.