“It’s in the kitchen that confidences are exchanged, that family life takes place; it’s among the remains of a meal or when your’re elbow-deep in peelings that you ask yourself what life is all about, rather than when you’re sunk in an armchair in the sitting room.”

A whole aspect of living well, of civilization itself, is threatened with extinction.

If we don’t watch out, the pleasure o be gained from the discriminating enjoyment of food will be lost. It may not be long before the art of fine cooking is viewed as the invention of a handful of snobs. . . .

Some succeed for a time. But while there may occasionally be mis-configurations among market prices that allow abnormal returns, they do not persist.

Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few that hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and whom we would rather die than be without.

If he does it outwardly (among others) then he has dishonored and shamed him.

So, if you look at what’s common among some of the companies I have, including the Four Seasons, NewsCorp, George V, the Plaza, these are all irreplaceable brands in their own fields.

Like the crow among mankind are the Zanj [African Blacks] for they are the worst of men and the most vicious of creatures in character and temperament.

The point is that there is tremendous hypocrisy among the Christian right. And I think that Christian voters should start looking at global warming and extreme poverty as a religious issue that speaks to the culture of life.

We got along very well without trying to make me look like I’m what I’m not.

There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.) I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then.