Salt is the only rock directly consumed by man. It corrodes but preserves, desiccates but is wrested from the water. It has fascinated man for thousands of years not only as a substance he prized and was willing to labour to obtain, but also as a generator of poetic and of mythic meaning. The contradictions it embodies only intensify its power and its links with experience of the sacred.

Our perception that we have 'no time' is one of the distinctive marks of modern Western culture.

It is the nature of human beings not to be able to leave nature alone.

A meal can be thought of as a ritual and a work of art, with limits laid down, desires aroused and fulfilled, enticements, variety, patterning and plot. As in a work of art, not only the overall form, but also the details matter intensely.

The ancient Greeks did not have to wrestle with the philosophical problem of the existence of evil. They did not claim their gods were good, just magnificent.

We use eating as a medium for social relationships: satisfaction of the most individual of needs becomes a means of creating community.

Bread is for us a kind of successor to the motherly breast, and it has been over the centuries responsible for billions of sighs of satisfaction.