I look up at the ceiling, tracing the foliage of the wreath. Today it makes me think of a hat, the large-brimmed hats women used to wear at some period during the old days: hats like enormous halos, festooned with fruit and flowers, and the feathers of exotic birds; hats like an idea of paradise, floating just above the head, a thought solidified.

Eating is our earliest metaphor, preceding our consciousness of gender difference, race, nationality, and language. We eat before we talk.

If I love you, is that a fact or a weapon?

Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.

The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'

The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner.

As I was whizzing around the United States on yet another demented book tour, getting up at four in the morning to catch planes, doing two cities a day, eating the Pringle food object out of the mini-bar at night as I crawled around on the hotel room floor, too tired even to phone room service, I thought, 'There must be a better way of doing this'.