The thunder of false modesty was deafening.

There arent many great passages written about food, but I love one by George Millar, who worked for the SOE in the second world war and wrote a book called Horned Pigeon. He had been on the run and hadnt eaten for a week, and his description of the cheese fondue he smells in the peasant kitchen of a house in eastern France is unbelievable.

The past was suddenly rushing in on me in a way I found hard to fight.

I think I have fallen in love and I believe the woman in question, though she has not said so, returns my feelings. How can I be sure when she has said nothing? Is this youthful vanity? I wish in some ways that it were. But I am so convinced that I barely need question myself. This conviction brings me no joy.[…]I am driven by a greater force than I can resist. I believe that force has its own reason and its own morality even if they may never be clear to me while I am alive.

If I could eat only one thing for the rest of my life, it would be rhubarb fool, which I make with ginger and a hint of elderflower cordial.

If not just the brain but the quirks that made the individual were composed of recycled matter only, it was hard to be sure where the edges of one such being ended and another person began.

It was entirely silent and I tried to breathe its peace.