From "Shall It Be... Eating or Dining?" (1944):
[After describing an ideal meal and courses, ending with coffee]..."I think the magic would have happened, and we'd sit for a long time with our elbows on the table, talking easily, hearing and seeing more than we had for some time because of the way we'd tasted more."
From the enlightening "Love in a Dish" (1948):
[In describing the three basic needs of life, food, love, shelter, and the poor quality and care of food]: "...having failed so completely to satisfy in harmony one of their three basic needs, it cannot be wondered that the other two, for love and shelter, are increasingly unfulfilled. There can be no warm, rich home life anywhere else if it does not exist at table, and in the same way there can be no enduring family happiness, no real marriage, if a man and woman cannot open themselves generously and without suspicion one to the other over a shared bowl of soup as well as a shared caress."
From "If This Were My Place" (1950):
[In describing her perfect restaurant, particularly a meal in San Francisco at a crusty, classic seafood place]..."If I were running this place... I'd leave it just as it is, cluttered and funny and right - right for now, that is: a bottle of cold light white wine, sizzling crab-legs meuniere, crisp bread on an ugly thick white plate, and beyond them the fog and the sound of harbor horns. But last week another place was right, a lunch of pure fantasy, of equally fantastic expense and 'restauraterie', in a beautifully appointed and beautifully managed and beautifully dishonest Beverly Hills hash house. And far back in my mind is that light high-voiced subtle room in New York, where the champagne and the finnan haddie were so completely right. If I were running this place, the mythical Perfect Restaurant, I'd try to be honest and fantastic and artful, so that I could serve forth what would be, at a given moment, the essential food, the nourishment most needed in a man's Design for Living."
From "The Art of Eating, California Style" (1981):
"... all I really know from experience is that the California way is the best, gastronomically, except perhaps for small places in southern France. But I have talked about California style with other people who know a lot more than I do, and they all agree that the eating, the foods, the dishes and the styles of cooking are for some reason better here than anywhere else in the United States. Why? I repeat. They reply: it's the freshness, the easiness, the availability. Or is it the ethnic influences? Or perhaps the climate? ... I have tentatively concluded that all of those factors are involved."
From "Only in Spots Have We Tamed the California Coast" (1985):
"The California coast stretches, for some thirteen hundred miles, from the Oregon border to Mexico. I have spent many of the good moments of my life along it, from the time I was three years old unti8l now, and I would ask no better than to end my days with the smell and sound of its wild surf wrapped around me."
"Across the water to the south [from Marin], blazing and twinkling at night and serene in all the changing lights of day, is San Francisco. Its court jester has named it Baghdad-on-the-Bay. This evocative title will do until a better one happens, but the City is literally indescribable... I have yet to leave San Francisco willingly... My only comfort is that I am confident I'll return, in one way or another, even as a ghost... It is the focal point of the whole beautiful coastline... The City, as its lovers smugly call it, rises pearly on its many hills, and all roads, at least in California, seem to lead to it. People feel lighter there, in their myriad ways, and there are clip joints and penthouses of utmost squalor or elegance to satisfy them, as they breathe the wonderful washed air and walk with unaccustomed vigor along the tipping streets. It is a fine place to be, the glowing jewel of the California coastline, in the planet's crown of such mysterious happenings."
Currently watching : Brideshead Revisited [Theatrical Release] 2008
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