I cannot count the good people I know who, to my mind, would be even better if they bent their spirits to the study of their own hungers.

First we eat, then we do everything else.

Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat - and drink! - with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.

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

All men are hungry. They always have been. They must eat, and when they deny themselves the pleasures of carrying out that need, they are cutting off part of their possible fullness, their natural realization of life, whether they are poor or rich.

You may feel that you have eaten too much...But this pastry is likefeathers - it is like snow. It is in fact good for you, a digestive!

Like most humans, I am hungry...our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it...

Or you can broil the meat, fry the onions, stew the garlic in the red wine...and ask me to supper. I'll not care, really, even if your nose is a little shiny, so long as you are self-possessed and sure that wolf or no wolf, your mind is your own and your heart is another's and therefore in the right place.

...after rare beef and wine, when the lobes turn red, was the time to ask favours or tell bad news.