There's a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.

Life is hard, we say. An oyster's life is worse. She lives motionless, soundless, her own cold ugly shape her only dissipation.

Salad is roughage and a French idea.

Probably no strychnine has sent as many husbands into their graves as mealtime scolding has, and nothing has driven more men into the arms of other women as the sound of a shrill whine at table.

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

I like old people when they have aged well. And old houses with an accumulation of sweet honest living in them are good. And the timelessness that only the passing of Time itself can give to objects both inside and outside the spirit is a continuing reassurance.

...for me there is too little of life to spend most of it forcing myself into detachment from it.