In general, I think, human beings are happiest at table when they are very young, very much in love or very alone.

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

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.

Almost every person has something secret he likes to eat.

...I prefer not to have among my guests two people or more, of any sex, who are in the first wild tremours of love. It is better to invite them after their new passion has settled, has solidified into a quieter reciprocity of emotions. (It is also a waste of good food, to serve it to new lovers.)

One ... aspect of the case for World War II is that while it was still a shooting affair it taught us survivors a great deal about daily living which is valuable to us now that it is, ethically at least, a question of cold weapons and hot words.

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.