It is a rare expert who clearly realizes how inexpert someone else can be.

There was something immensely comforting, I found, about a crumpet - so comforting that I've never forgotten about them and have even learned to make them myself against those times when I have no other source of supply.

I recently adopted for my own a good motto I saw somewhere, on a barroom mirror or possibly a washroom wall: 'The time you enjoyed wasting wasn't wasted.' I think I'll have that printed some day on a T-shirt or the bedroom ceiling.

Life is so very simple when you have no facts to confuse you.

Some people collect paperweights, or pre-Columbian figures, or old masters, or young mistresses, or tombstone rubbings, or five-minute recipes, or any of a thousand other things... My own collection is sunrises; and I find that they have their advantages. Sunrises are usually handsome, they can't possibly be dusted, and they take only a little room, so long as it has a window to see them from.

As millions of women have done before me, I pulled domesticity over my head like a blanket and found I was still cold.

But let me say this about learning experiences: they're weird. Or put it this way: what you learn from a learning experience is generally something else.