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

As for the house, it is scrubbed to the tiniest mousehole before Passover, to avoid such dangers as even a forgotten cake crumb might cause. Passover dishes are probably the most interesting of any in the Jewish cuisine because of the lack of leaven and the resulting challenge to fine cooks.... Everything is doubly rich, as if to compensate for the lack of leaven... [W]oes are forgotten in the pleasures of the table, for if the Mosaic laws are rightly followed, no man need fear true poison in his belly, but only the results of his own gluttony.

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!

There is a mistaken idea, ancient but still with us, that an overdose of anything from fornication to hot chocolate will teach restraint by the very results of its abuse.

At its best, [Japanese cooking] is inextricably meshed with aesthetics, with religion, with tradition and history. It is evocative of seasonal changes, or of one's childhood, or of a storm at sea.

It was there [Dijon], I now understand, that I started to grow up, to study, to make love, to eat and drink, to be me and not what I was expected to be. It was there that I learned it is blessed to receive, as well as that every human being, no matter how base, is worthy of my respect and even my envy because he knows something that I may never be old or wise or kind or tender enough to know.

It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.