You may feel that you have eaten too much...But this pastry is like feathers - it is like snow. It is in fact good for you, a digestive!

. . . 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 . . .

But if I must be alone, I refuse to be alone as if it were something weak and distasteful, like convalescence.

Children and old people and the parents in between should be able to live together, in order to learn how to die with grace, together. And I fear that this is purely utopian fantasy.

I think that when two people are able to weave that kind of invisible thread of understanding and sympathy between each other, that delicate web, they should not risk tearing it. It is too rare, and it lasts too short a time at best.

It must not simply be taken for granted that a given set of ill-assorted people, for no other reason than because it is Christmas, will be joyful to be reunited and to break bread together.

Brioches are a light, pale yellow, faintly sweet kind of muffin with a characteristic blob on top, rather like a mushroom just pushing crookedly through the ground. Once eaten in Paris, they never taste as good anywhere else.