I wrote from the time I was four. It was my way of screaming and yelling, the primal scream. I wrote like a junkie, I had to have my daily fix.

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.

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

Salad is roughage and a French idea.

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.

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.

Most bereaved souls crave nourishment more tangible than prayers: they want a steak.