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

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.

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.

When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it . . . and it is all one.

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.