I can no more think of my own life without thinking of wine and wines and where they grew for me and why I drank them when I did and why I picked the grapes and where I opened the oldest procurable bottles, and all that, than I can remember living before I breathed.

Wine and cheese are ageless companions, like aspirin and aches, or June and moon, or good people and noble ventures.

Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg until it is broken.

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.

Dictionaries are always fun, but not always reassuring.

It is impossible to think of any good meal, no matter how plain or elegant, without soup or bread in it.

There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.

War is a beastly business, it is true, but one proof we are human is our ability to learn, even from it, how better to exist.