[Bachelors'] approach to gastronomy is basically sexual, since few of them under seventy-nine will bother to produce a good meal unless it is for a pretty woman.

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

. . . word-sniffing . . . is an addiction, like glue -- or snow -- sniffing in a somewhat less destructive way, physically if not economically. . . . As an addict, I am almost guiltily interested in converts to my own illness . . .

Central heating, French rubber goods and cookbooks are three amazing proofs of man's ingenuity in transforming necessity into art, and, of these, cookbooks are perhaps most lastingly delightful.

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

I honestly believe that everything I know about the writing of non-fiction (or writing) could be engraved on the head of a pin with a garden hoe.

Family dinners are more often than not an ordeal of nervous indigestion, preceded by hidden resentment and ennui and accompanied by psychosomatic jitters.