Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization.

Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.

There is no escape from mystery. It is the character of our being.

Like all bad drivers, he [Henry Andrews] thought he was the best driver in the world...

There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die.

The French use cooking as a means of self-expression, and this meal perfectly represented the personality of a cook who had spent the morning resting her unwashed chin on the edge of a tureen, pondering whether she should end her life immediately by plunging her head into her abominable soup.

It seemed a good idea at the time.