Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat - and drink! - with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.

I cannot count the good people I know who to my mind would be even better if they bent their spirits to the study of their own hungers.

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

A potato is a poor thing, poorly treated. More often than not it is cooked in so unthinking and ignorant a manner as to make one feel that it has never before been encountered in the kitchen.

Probably the most satisfying soup in the world for people who are hungry, as well as for those who are tired or worried or cross or in debt or in a moderate amount of pain or in love or in robust health or in any kind of business huggermuggery, is minestrone.

I live with carpe diem engraved on my heart.

... there can be no more shameless carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself.