Good manners make any man a pleasure to be with. Ask any woman.

The English kill their meat twice: once when they slaughter it and once when they cook it.

Sundays in France have a different atmosphere to other days, with fewer phone calls, no postman, no delivery men and no one banging on the door.

The great thing about having money is that you can actually just get on with your life and not have to think about paying the bills or crouch over The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times and look at the stock figures and things like that. That bores me rigid.

No matter what their background, the southern French are fascinated by food.

Prescription for writer’s block: fear of poverty.

Very little happens in my books.