There are two kinds of people in this world: the ones who don't cook out of and have NEVER cooked out of THE I HATE TO COOK BOOK, and the other kind...The I HATE TO COOK people consist mainly of those who find other things more interesting and less fattening, and so they do it as seldom as possible. Today there is an Annual Culinary Olympics, with hundreds of cooks from many countries ardently competing. But we who hate to cook have had our own Olympics for years, seeing who can get out of the kitchen the fastest and stay out the longest.

When I finally gathered, invented, stole, simplified, borrowed, and found a publisher for a clutch of reasonably foolproof recipes, I learned I had friends I hadn't known about - more proof that a mutual dislike can be quite as sound a basis for friendship as a mutual devotion.

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.

a celebrity is someone who no longer does the things that made him a celebrity.

the most all-around, practical, long-wearing illusions are the ones that you weave yourself.

You may have noticed, as I have, that if ever you find yourself declaring emphatically and unequivocally that you will never do some one particular thing, chances are good that this is precisely what you will one day find yourself doing.

Gifts of time and love are surely the basic ingredients of a truly merry Christmas.