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

Cooks must feed their egos as well as their customers.

Almost any normal oyster never knows from one year to the next whether he is he or she, and may start at any moment, after the first year, to lay eggs where before he spent his sexual energies in being exceptionally masculine.

... most bereaved souls crave nourishment more tangible than prayers: they want a steak. What is more, they need a steak. Preferably they need it rare, grilled, heavily salted, for that way it is most easily digested, and most quickly turned into the glandular whip their tired adrenals cry for.

Having bowed to the inevitability of the dictum that we must eat to live, we should ignore it and live to eat.

I can no more think of my own life without thinking of wine and wines and where they grew for me and why I drank them when I did and why I picked the grapes and where I opened the oldest procurable bottles, and all that, than I can remember living before I breathed.

A pleasant aperitif, as well as a good chaser for a short quick whiskey, as well again for a fine supper drink, is beer.